Public health activities for ensuring adequate sleep among school-age children: current status and future directions

This paper reviews epidemiological findings on sleep problems among school-age children and discusses the current status and future directions of public health activities for ensuring adequate sleep. The main sleep problems for school-age children are delayed bedtimes caused by a change in the surrounding environment and resultant consequences related to sleep loss and irregular sleep-wake schedules. Health education activities and interventions aiming at improving certain environmental factors and behavioral changes have been conducted. However, some problems exist among current public health programs for ensuring adequate sleep. First, perspectives regarding physiological changes, accompanied by secondary sexual development, are lacking. Second, most existing public health activities for ensuring adequate sleep aim to disseminate knowledge and cannot achieve behavioral change. Finally, intervention perspectives within the parental and home environment are deficient. Considering such problems, the present review examines future directions for epidemiological studies on sleep problems among school-age children, with a specific emphasis on improving the effectiveness and efficacy of public health activities for ensuring adequate sleep.