Dayna Johnson, PhD, MPH, MSW, MS talks about the necessity of community partnerships as the recipient of this year’s Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Award at SLEEP 2023 and how inquiring into the community is vital for integrating healthy sleep practices.
Understanding what the community needs when committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is an integral part to helping communities’ improve their sleep health, explains Dayna Johnson, PhD, MPH, MSW, MS, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in this interview from SLEEP 2023.
Transcript
How important are community partnerships to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts?
They're absolutely essential. Without community partnerships, we can't do this work. Something that I like to talk a lot about is the lived experience. What we're doing in this research is really informed by what's a priority to the community, and then what's feasible. It's one thing for us to come up with different ways on how to intervene, but if someone is not amenable to those, then it won't be efficient or effective. So, having those partnerships to find out, “what's the priority? How can we partner to make this change?” And then also for us to understand, “what are the factors that are prohibiting sleep for you?”
As an example, from some of my work, we did focus groups around what we formerly referred to as sleep hygiene, which is really just healthy sleep practices, which include sleeping in a dark, quiet room. We had participants say, "I absolutely can't do that. Someone will break into my house if it's dark." That's not something whoever created these thought about. There's nothing around safety, but it's absolutely important. We have to make sure we're finding out, what are the barriers and facilitators and then using those to leverage the work we're doing to make change.
Just as it is important for retail analysts to understand the choices their customers make and why they may choose not to purchase a specific item, so is it important for the specialty pharmacy industry to understand the actions of prescribers and how the often inefficient prior authorization process affects patient outcomes.
Read More
Tackling Health Inequality: The Power of Education and Experience
April 30th 2024To help celebrate and recognize National Minority Health Month, we are bringing you a special month-long podcast series with our Strategic Alliance Partner, UPMC Health Plan. Welcome to our final episode of this limited series and our conversation with Janine Jelks-Seale, MSPPM, director of health equity at UPMC Health Plan.
Listen
Dr Kathy Zackowski Discusses the Importance of Rehabilitation Research and Trials in MS
April 26th 2024Kathy Zackowski, PhD, National MS Society, expresses the inherent value of quality rehabilitation trials for broadening clinical understandings of multiple sclerosis (MS) and bettering patient outcomes.
Read More
Examining Low-Value Cancer Care Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
April 25th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the April 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on the rates of low-value cancer care services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen