Bethany Ogbenna, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Postdoc Fellow

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Although sufficient sleep across all human life stages is essential for health and disease prevention, minoritized racial and ethnic groups and sexual and gender minority populations are disproportionately impacted by poor sleep health. Environmental and social determinants of health are theorized as key contributors to these sleep disparities, and cumulative environmental and social burdens are differentially experienced over the life course across sexual/gender and racial/ethnic populations.

While prior studies that have used a reductionist approach suggest individual environmental burdens are associated with sleep health among socially disadvantaged groups, no prior studies have used comprehensive community-level environmental and social assessments aligned with the exposome (i.e., the totality of exposures during a lifetime) in relation to sleep health, especially across the life course. To address this gap, we aim to determine socioeconomic status (SES) trajectories from childhood to adulthood in relation to adulthood sleep health. We will also investigate environmental burdens (e.g., pollution/toxicants), social (e.g., SES) and health (e.g., hypertension) vulnerabilities in relation to sleep health.

Using the 2010-2018 Study for Environmental, Lifestyle and Fibroids data, we will apply generalized estimated equations to log binomial regression models to assess associations between life course SES trajectories and sleep health. To examine associations between environmental burden (measured by the Environmental Justice Index) and sleep health, we will apply multilevel regression models and assess life course SES trajectories as potential modifiers using data from the 2018-2022 Personalized Genomics Study.

Our findings will identify community-level environmental, social, and health vulnerabilities that will elucidate existing sleep disparities across the life course.