School-based sleep education programs: A knowledge-to-action perspective regarding barriers, proposed solutions, and future directions

Sleep is associated with an array of physical and mental health outcomes that are essential for healthy adjustment in children. Unfortunately, transfer of this knowledge into action has been slow and largely ineffective. There are only 15 published school-based sleep health promotion programs, and findings are mixed in terms of their impact on sleep behavior, knowledge and health outcomes. This paper applies a knowledge-to-action (KTA) framework to assess the strengths and weaknesses of such programs and to identify strategies that can be used to enhance the translation of empirical evidence in pediatric sleep to effective action. It is proposed that effectiveness of interventions may be increased by defining specific targets for change, identifying prospectively the gap between current sleep practice or knowledge and intervention goals, assessing and addressing barriers and facilitators for program implementation, adapting the program for local use, tailoring it to the developmental needs of the target users, using rigorous designs to evaluate outcomes and improving sustainability by engaging multiple stakeholders throughout the KTA process. Collectively it is proposed that integrating a KTA framework and related strategies will enhance the effectiveness of these programs in translating empirical evidence in pediatric sleep to effective and sustained action.