The Social Epidemiology of Sleep

Sleep, along with the sleep-related behaviours that impact sleep quality, have emerged as one of the major determinants of health and well-being (alongside good diet, regular exercise, and not smoking). In turn research is beginning to identify that sleep is strongly socially patterned--by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, immigrant status, stage of the life course, work experiences, stress, and neighbourhood contexts. Yet no textbook currently exists that brings together the accumulated evidence on the social epidemiology of sleep. This text is targeted toward (a) social epidemiologists who wish to study sleep as a health outcome, (b) sleep epidemiologists who want to learn about the social determinants of sleep, and (c) other scholars working in the intersection between sleep health, social epidemiology, and health disparities.