Good nights sleep program: design and preliminary findings from a randomized clinical trial to improve child and parent sleep in low-income families.

INTRODUCTION: Sleep is essential for human health. For low-income individuals and families, sufficient, high-quality, regular sleep can be difficult to obtain due to two main barriers: factors that prevent optimum sleep hygiene behaviors and aspects of the bedroom environment, such as noise and temperature, that reduce sleep. This article describes the rationale and design of the Good Nights Sleep Program, a pilot of a randomized clinical trial (clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06249217) that combines education with behavior change strategies that lead children and their parents to select, implement, and track changes to their sleep behaviors and environments. Following the conceptual description of the interventions, descriptive statistics from the pilot study are presented.

METHODS: The study enrolled parent-child dyads with a mean family income-to-needs ratio of 1.68 (75% Black; 25% White).

RESULTS: Findings provided proof of concept for the intervention and descriptive preliminary evidence. Children receiving the intervention had longer actigraphy-derived sleep hours compared to waitlist control-arm participants, and parents had shorter self-reported usual sleep latency and more consistent actigraphic wake times.

DISCUSSION: The Good Nights Sleep Program offers a promising model for empowering children and parents to make attainable changes that yield benefits for their sleep.