Who sleeps well in Canada? The social determinants of sleep health among middle-aged and older adults in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Authors

Rebecca Rodrigues
Amy Jing
Kelly K. Anderson, Western UniversityFollow
Rea Alonzo
Piotr Wilk
Graham J Reid
Jason Gilliland
Guangyong Zou
Kathryn Nicholson
Giuseppe Guaiana
Saverio Stranges

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-15-2023

Journal

Sleep Health

URL with Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2023.09.015

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Sleep health inequities likely contribute to disparities in health outcomes. Our objective was to identify social determinants of sleep health among middle-aged/older adults in Canada, where prior evidence is limited.

METHODS: We analyzed cross-sectional data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a survey of over 30,000 community-dwelling adults aged 45-85years. Self-reported measures included sleep duration, sleep satisfaction, and sleep efficiency. We explored associations between sleep measures and social determinants of health. We used modified Poisson regression to estimate prevalence ratios for sleep satisfaction and sleep efficiency, and linear regression for sleep duration. Estimates were adjusted for all social, lifestyle, and clinical covariates. We explored effect modification by sex.

RESULTS: Of the 11 social determinants explored, all were significantly associated with at least one domain of sleep health. These associations were reduced to 9 variables with adjustment for all social variables, and 7 with further adjustment for lifestyle and clinical covariates, including differences by sex, age, education, marital status, employment, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Better sleep health in >1 domain was observed among males, older age groups (65 and older), higher income groups, the retired group, and homeowners with adjustment for social variables, and only in males and older age groups with additional adjustment for lifestyle and clinical variables. Only sleep duration associations were modified by sex.

CONCLUSIONS: Sleep health disparities among Canadian adults exist across socioeconomic gradients and racial/ethnic minority groups. Poor sleep health among disadvantaged groups warrants increased attention as a public health problem in Canada.

Notes

This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.