A Sleep Hygiene Intervention to Improve Sleep Quality in Urban, Latino Middle School Children - Phase 1
Condition: Sleep; Sleep Hygiene, Inadequate
Study type: Observational

Summary: 
      Sleep is essential for children's daytime functioning and health. Poorer sleep hygiene can
      negatively affect sleep outcomes in children. Urban Latino children are at greater risk for
      poor sleep hygiene and poor quality sleep due to exposure to higher levels of urban and
      cultural stressors. This project aims to refine and test a novel school-based intervention to
      improve sleep hygiene and in turn, sleep quality in urban Latino middle school children. An
      existing sleep hygiene intervention that has been shown to improve sleep in urban children
      will be culturally and contextually tailored and has the potential to exert greater
      improvements in sleep hygiene and sleep outcomes for this high-risk group.
    

Detailed description: 
      Not sleeping long or soundly enough can lead to health problems in children, including more
      asthma symptoms and risk for obesity. Latino children might be especially at risk for poor
      sleep and worse asthma. Therefore, the goal of this study is to adapt an existing
      intervention called Sleep Smart for use with urban Latino middle school students. The new
      program will be called "Sleep Smart Latino" (SSL), the goal of which is to improve sleep
      quality among Latino, middle school-aged children in urban public schools. SSL will be
      administered by trained community members to a group of Latino middle school children who are
      at risk for poor sleep quality. The program will be tested in San Juan, Puerto Rico and
      Providence, Rhode Island.

      The first aim of this project is to refine the SS intervention and intervention procedures so
      that they eventually can be used in a larger study of the intervention's effectiveness.
      Refinement will involve a) translation and cultural tailoring for Latino middle school
      students, b) enhancement of the parent component, and c) ensuring applicability to the urban,
      middle school setting in both sites (PR and RI). In-depth interviews with caregivers
      (N=20-25), focus groups (middle school students [N = 5], caregivers [N =5], and school staff
      [N = 5]), and Investigators with expertise in culturally tailored interventions will provide
      input.

      The second aim of this project is to test the feasibility of the SSL intervention and
      training procedures through an Open Trial, to refine intervention modules and the training
      approach that will be used in the larger study. The Open Trial will include 15 adolescent
      participants at each study site.

      The third aim of this project is to test the SSL intervention through a Pilot Randomized
      Control Trial (RCT) to provide estimates of effect size that will be used to inform the
      sample size for the larger study. The RCT will include 75 adolescent participants at each
      study site. We expect the participants in the SSL intervention will have improvement on the
      following primary sleep quality outcomes (improved sleep duration and sleep efficiency) as
      measured by actigraphy, relative to the control conditions. Secondarily, we expect
      participants in SSL will show a decrease in total daily caloric intake relative to the
      control conditions.

      This registration refers only to aim 1 of the project.
    

Observational model: Case-Only
Time perspective: Cross-Sectional
Sampling method: Non-Probability Sample
Study population: 
        The study population is urban, Latino middle school students (11-13 years old) and their
        primary caregivers. While for the second phase of this study participants will be middle
        school students who report sleeping less than 9 hours per night, for this phase those who
        sleep more and less than 9 hours per night will be included.
      
Keywords: Latino children; middles school; sleep hygiene; educational intervention