Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Boston University, Boston	BA	05/1979	Six Year Medical Honors Program
Boston University School of Medicine, Boston	MD	05/1979	Medicine
Harvard School Of Public Health, Boston	MPH	05/1986	Respiratory Epidemiology

I direct the Program in Sleep Medicine Epidemiology at BWH. Our goals are to conduct rigorous and population-based research to: elucidate the role of genetics, early life developmental factors, and environmental exposures on sleep health; identify how social and environmental factors shape sleep health disparities which in turn drive chronic health disparities; and identify the role of sleep interventions in improving health, including cardiovascular, metabolic, and cognitive disorders.

Within the Program, we support the following Resources:

The BWH Sleep Reading Center (www.bostonsleep.org), an international core laboratory that provides leadership in the design and implementation of sleep data collection for numerous clinical trials and cohort studies. It spearheaded efforts at establishing rigorous quality control procedures for multi-site sleep research and for integrating advanced signal processing analytics into large scale-epidemiological datasets to provide quantitative biomarkers of sleep and sleep disorders.

The National Sleep Research Resource (NSRR; www.sleepdata.org), a NHLBI-data and tool repository and community engagement resource that shares large quantities of polysomnography, actigraphy and other data coupled with tools to structure, harmonize, visualize and analyze sleep data.

The Sleep Apnea Patient-Centered Outcomes Network (MyApnea; www.myapnea.org), a web-based portal to promote sleep apnea patient support and patient engagement in research.

I am the recipient of a NHLBI Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) that supports a research and training program, Phenotypic and Genomic Signatures For Sleep Apnea. This program brings together trainees and experts in epidemiology, genetic and sleep/respiratory physiology to identify biomarkers and molecular mechanisms for sleep apnea risk, models interactions between sleep disorders and genetic risk factors (G*E), and attempts to resolve the heterogeneity in sleep apnea that predicts differences in outcomes and treatment response.

I co-direct the following multi-center clinical trials:
Pediatric Adenotonsillectomy Trial (PATS; patstrial.org)
Impact of Low Flow Oxygen on Hospital Admissions and Mortality in Heart Failure and Central Sleep Apnea (LOFT-HF; lofthf.study).

I co-lead a cohort study examining the impact of the home environment on sleep disorders among children in low income urban neighborhoods. (Environmental Assessment of Sleep in Youth).

• Sleep Medicine Specialty
• epidemiology
• Clinical Trials, Randomized
• health disparities
• Genetic Epidemiology