SLEEP Empowers Lab
The SLEEP Empowers Lab at Nationwide Children’s Hospital studies how sleep affects children’s health, learning, behavior and daily functioning. The lab examines the factors that influence sleep across families and communities and develops tools that support early recognition of sleep needs. This work helps inform programs and partnerships that promote health sleep for all children, with focused support for communities experiencing the greatest barriers.
SLEEP Friendly Cities was founded by Dr. Davenport and team at Nationwide Children’s Hospital November 2025 and recently launched community engagement/outreach efforts March 2026. The lab serves as the research and evaluation partner for SLEEP Friendly Cities, providing evidence, data insights and learning support that guide the initiative’s community and system-level strategies.
Our Mission
The SLEEP Empowers Lab advances sleep health through:
- Research on sleep patterns, daily functioning and child development.
- Development of tools that support early identification of sleep needs.
- Evaluation of community and clinical strategies that promote healthy sleep.
- Collaboration with families, clinicians and community partners.
- Training the next generation of sleep health researchers.
Inside SLEEP Empowers Lab
Areas of Focus
- Sleep and Daily Functioning: Studies explore how sleep influences learning, behavior, emotional wellbeing and physical health across childhood adolescence.
- Sleep Environments and Community Conditions: Research examines how home, school and neighborhood environments shape sleep and identifies opportunities to support healthier sleep across communities.
- Early Identification of Sleep Needs: The lab develops and tests tools that help families and providers recognize sleep concerns earlier and connect children to appropriate support.
- Population and System-Level Approaches: Projects evaluate strategies that can be used across clinics, schools and community settings to promote healthy sleep at scale.
- Support for SLEEP Friendly Cities: The lab provides research, evaluation and data insights that guide the SLEEP Friendly Cities initiative and help ensure that programs are effective, accessible and responsive to families.
Featured Publications
- Sirrianni JW, Calloway A, Hussain SA, Liu H, Bartlett CW, Davenport MA. Development of a rule-based natural language processing algorithm to extract sleep information in pediatric primary care patients with a sleep diagnosis.Sleep Adv. 2026;7(1):zpag014. Published 2026 Feb 13. doi:10.1093/sleepadvances/zpag014
- Bunnell HT, Reedy C, Lorman V, et al. A natural language processing pipeline for identifying pediatric long COVID symptoms and functional impacts in freeform clinical notes: a RECOVER study. JAMIA Open. 2025;8(5):ooaf089. Published 2025 Sep 4. doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooaf089
- Oks M, Sachdeva R, Davenport MA, et al. Artificial intelligence in sleep medicine: an updated American Academy of Sleep Medicine position statement. J Clin Sleep Med. 2025;21(11):1953-1955. doi:10.5664/jcsm.11832
- Davenport MA, Berkley S, Phillips SR, et al. Association of Exposure to Interpersonal Racism and Racial Disparities in Inadequate Sleep Risk. J Pediatr. 2025;276:114378. doi:10.1016/j.jpeds.2024.114378
- Davenport MA, Sirrianni JW, Chisolm DJ. Machine learning data sources in pediatric sleep research: assessing racial/ethnic differences in electronic health record-based clinical notes prior to model training. Front Sleep. 2024;3:1271167. doi:10.3389/frsle.2024.1271167
Join Our Team
The SLEEP Empowers Lab offers training experiences for individuals interested in how sleep affects children’s health and how communities can better support healthy sleep across daily life.
Featured Research Projects
SLEEP Friendly Cities is a multilevel approach to population sleep health prevention and promotion. The SLEEP Friendly Cities framework aims to deploy a variety of strategic arms, interventions and initiatives across three focus areas:
- Place-Based Investments in Sleep Health: Investments in sleep desert communities addressing upstream social and environmental drivers of family sleep health, key risk factors and gaps for medically underserved populations.
- Health System Strengthening for Systemwide Sleep Management: Initiatives focused on evidence-based and systemwide practices essential to bridging population sleep prevention, early detection and access to sleep health care services.
- Impact Evaluation and Population Sleep Innovations: Program evaluation based on data and research best practices to inform all aspects of the initiative’s community needs and asset assessment, implementation, scaling and sustainability.
The SLEEP Empowers Lab contributes to the initiative by:
- Conducting Research that informs community sleep resources.
- Evaluating sleep education and engagement strategies.
- Supporting development of tools that help families build healthy sleep routines.
- Providing data insights that help partners understand local sleep needs.
- Collaborating with community organizations to ensure resources are practical and relevant.
- This partnership helps ensure that SLEEP Friendly Cities is grounded in evidence and aligned with the needs of children and families across Franklin County.
NIH K01-funded population health study that uses machine learning approaches to support the equitable identification of pediatric sleep deficiency in the electronic health care records.
A community-based observational study that utilizes to assess daily association between physiological arousal, sleep disturbance, and racism-related stressors in adolescents across 14 days.
Funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and in collaboration with principal investigator Dr. Hughes and Dr. Asarnow (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) as co-principal investigator, the research team will compare the effectiveness of two evidence-based school-friendly interventions among youth ages 12 to 18 in middle and high schools in Ohio and California. Evaluating the two approaches to sleep health treatment in schools, a setting where most youth spend large portions of their days, will allow the project to examine the benefits of these treatments in a setting with the possibility of offering near universal access to treatment for students, including vulnerable students who face systemic, personal and other barriers to treatment.
- Co-Investigator; Davenport
A retrospective cohort study conducted to complete the following objective: 1) evaluate the association between social and environmental determinants and sleep health care disparities and related comorbidities using the SDH screening cohort data, 2) analyze and report current epidemiologic estimates and trends of clinical sleep outcomes using SDH screening cohort data, 3) longitudinally describe the current racial/ethnic and social needs disparities in the sleep care cascade from Primary Care, School-Based Health, Healthy Weight and Behavioral Health clinics to the Sleep Center cohorts.
- Principal Investigator; Davenport
This is a community-based, multigenerational sleep health awareness campaign that will use strategies to increase awareness of insufficient sleep, obstructive sleep apnea, and early identification of sleep problems. The objectives of this community-based effort are to engage stakeholders in co-developing culturally tailored educational materials and to implement a community campaign that includes workshops, social media engagement, and community outreach activities. Participant feedback and surveys will be collected to evaluate reach, knowledge gains, changes in sleep behaviors, and engagement.
- Principal Investigator; Davenport
Trainee Opportunities
Students and early-career professionals play an important role in advancing sleep health research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The SLEEP Empowers Lab offers training experiences for individuals interested in how sleep affects children’s health and how communities can better support healthy sleep across daily life.
Trainees contribute to projects that examine sleep patterns, daily functioning and the environments that shape sleep across childhood and adolescence. Opportunities are designed to support skill development in research methods, community partnership and program evaluation. Training experiences are structured to benefit all learners while providing additional exposure to communities where sleep barriers are more common.
What Trainees Gain
Trainees receive hands-on experience in:
- Collecting and analyzing data related to child and adolescent sleep
- Supporting community-engaged research activities
- Contributing to the development of sleep education materials
- Participating in program evaluation and quality improvement efforts
- Working alongside multidisciplinary teams across Nationwide Children’s Hospital
These experiences help prepare trainees for careers in pediatrics, psychology, public health, population health, education, social sciences, engineering, communications and other fields connected to child and community wellbeing.
Who Should Apply
The lab welcomes undergraduate and graduate students from a wide range of fields who are interested in child health, community wellbeing or population-level approaches to improving sleep. Students studying health sciences, social sciences, education, public policy, data science, engineering, communications, business or related areas are encouraged to apply. Applicants should be motivated to learn, comfortable working in community settings and interested in contributing to research that supports children and families across Central Ohio.
The lab also offers observational only shadowing opportunities for middle and high school students (e.g., Made for Medicine) who want early exposure to sleep health and community-engaged research.
Undergraduate research roles are offeredcourse credit only, and all trainee opportunities, paid and unpaid, are limited to a total cap of 10 active trainees each semester to ensure high-quality mentorship and supervision.
Students seeking future paid undergraduate research assistant roles may become eligible after two successful semesters of course credit participation, based on performance, lab capacity and available funding at the discretion of Dr. Davenport.
How Trainees Support SLEEP Friendly Cities
Trainees may assist with activities that help strengthen sleep health across Franklin County, including:
- Supporting community engagement events
- Helping develop or refine sleep education materials
- Assisting with data collection and analysis
- Participating in evaluation activities that inform community programs
These contributions help ensure that sleep resources are accessible, practical and responsive to the needs of families.
How to Apply
Interested applicants may submit:
- A résumé or CV
- A brief statement describing interests and goals
- Academic program and anticipated availability
Materials can be sent to SleepEmpowersLab@NationwideChildrens.org
