While essential for health and wellness, the various dimensions of sleep health are generally not equitably distributed across the population, and reasons for racial/ethnic sleep disparities are not fully understood. In this review, we describe racial/ethnic sleep disparities and subsequent implications for health from prior and recently conducted epidemiological and clinical studies as well as the potential sleep interventions presented at the 2018 Research Conference on Sleep and the Health of Women at the National Institutes of Health. Given the clear connection between sleep and poor health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, we concluded that future studies are needed to focus on sleep health in general, sleep disorders such as insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea in particular, and disparities in both sleep health and sleep disorders among women using an intersectional framework. Future research should also integrate sleep into interventional research focused on women's health as these results could address health disparities by informing, for example, future mobile health (mHealth) interventions prioritizing women beyond the clinical setting.

Background: Psychological sequelae are among the most pronounced effects in populations following exposure to oil spills. Women in particular represent a vulnerable yet influential population but have remained relatively understudied with respect to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DHOS). Objective: To describe the relationship between oil spill exposure and mental health among women living in the southern coastal Louisiana parishes affected by the DHOS. Methods: The Women and Their Children’s Health Study administered telephone interviews to a population-based sample of 2,842 women between 2012 and 2014 following the DHOS. Participants were asked about depression, mental distress, domestic conflict, and exposure to the oil spill. Results: Over 28% of the sample reported symptoms of depression, 13% reported severe mental distress, 16% reported an increase in the number of fights with their partners, and 11% reported an increase in the intensity of partner fights. Both economic and physical exposure were significantly associated with depressive symptoms and domestic conflict, whereas only physical exposure was related to mental distress. Conclusions: This large, population-based study of women in southern coastal Louisiana, a particularly disaster-prone area of the country, revealed high rates of poor mental health outcomes. Reported exposure to the DHOS was a significant predictor of these outcomes, suggesting avenues for future disaster mitigation through the provision of mental health services. Citation: Rung AL, Gaston S, Oral E, Robinson WT, Fontham E, Harrington DJ, Trapido E, Peters ES. 2016. Depression, mental distress, and domestic conflict among Louisiana women exposed to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the WaTCH Study. Environ Health Perspect 124:1429–1435; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP167

Although low neighborhood social cohesion (nSC) has been linked with poor sleep, studies of racially/ethnically diverse participants using multiple sleep dimensions remain sparse. Using National Health Interview Survey data, we examined overall, age, sex/gender, and racial/ethnic-specific associations between nSC and sleep health among 167,153 adults. Self-reported nSC was categorized into low, medium, and high. Very short sleep duration was defined as <6 hours; short as <7 h, recommended as 7–9 h, and long as ≥9 h. Sleep disturbances were assessed based on trouble falling and staying asleep, waking up feeling unrested, and using sleep medication (all ≥3 days/times in the previous week). Adjusting for sociodemographics and other confounders, we used Poisson regression with robust variance to estimate prevalence ratios (PRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for sleep dimensions by low and medium vs. high nSC. The mean age of the sample was 47 ± 0.1 years, 52% of those included were women, and 69% were Non-Hispanic (NH)-White. Low vs. high nSC was associated with a higher prevalence of very short sleep (PR = 1.29; (95% CI = 1.23–1.36)). After adjustment, low vs. high nSC was associated with very short sleep duration among NH-White (PR = 1.34 (95% CI = 1.26–1.43)) and NH-Black (PR = 1.14 (95% CI = 1.02–1.28)) adults. Low nSC was associated with shorter sleep duration and sleep disturbances.