Neighborhoods and sleep health among adults: A systematic review

Objective: Sleep is an important determinant of various health outcomes, and insufficient sleep and sleep dis-orders are a public health crisis in the United States. The objective of this review is to provide an update on scientific contributions to our understanding of the social/built environmental determinants of sleep health. In particular, this review focuses on the diverse measurements of neighborhood characteristics and sleep outcomes, as well as analytic approaches for quantifying the effect of neighborhood on sleep health.Methods: Two major electronic databases were searched and reviewed for relevant articles that examined the associations of social/built environments with sleep health. Inclusion criteria included peer-reviewed empiri -cal studies on neighborhood-level characteristics and sleep health among adult populations.Results: Systematic searches in MEDLINE/PubMed and SCOPUS identified 52 eligible articles (out of 11,084). Various social/built environmental characteristics of neighborhoods were identified as potential determi-nants of sleep health, and the majority of studies examined neighborhood social capital, safety, and environ-mental stressors. However, 88% of included articles employed cross-sectional study designs, limiting causal identification. We found substantial differences in neighborhood measures, variations in sleep health meas-urements with the majority employing self-reported methods, and inconsistent model specifications. While the majority of articles (48%) utilized perceived neighborhood conditions as the main exposure, more recent studies (23%) employed geographic information systems to measure neighborhood characteristics.Conclusions: To establish the causal relationships between social/physical neighborhood characteristics and sleep health, more studies should be conducted with longitudinal, quasi-experimental, and randomized trial designs coupled with objectively measured neighborhood and sleep health parameters.(c) 2022 National Sleep Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Sleep is crucial for health outcomes, and insufficient sleep is a public health crisis in the United States. Research has shown that neighborhood social and built environment characteristics may impact sleep health, but more longitudinal studies and objective measurement methods are needed to establish causal relationships.