# Aging & Sleep 2020

> **NIH NIH R13** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2020 · $49,250

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Sleep is a vital physiological function that changes qualitatively and quantitatively across the lifespan. Highly
prevalent sleep disorders in older adults including insomnia, sleep-disordered breathing, and circadian rhythm
disturbances have been associated with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related DementiasC7, accidents/falls,
cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysregulation, polypharmacy, and increased risk of mortality in older adults.
However, the process of diagnosis and intervention is often complicated due to the presence of multiple
medical comorbidities/medications, disability, racial disparities and specific age-related risk factors for sleep
disruption. Additional challenges to screening, diagnosing, and treating sleep disorders in older adults with
Alzheimer’s Disease and Related DementiasC7 and those in long-term care facilities also exist. There is a
pressing need to increase cross-talk between the geriatric research and sleep research communities in order
to enhance opportunities for collaboration and research to address these public health concerns. This
conference proposal, “Aging and Sleep 2020”, is designed to address these gaps.
Aging and Sleep is an international meeting dedicated to sleep medicine research in older adults. Since 2010,
the Aging and Sleep international meeting has been held every two/three years in Europe with up to 400
delegates participating from 20 countries. Participants include physicians, research investigators, trainees,
sleep technicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, as well as policy makers and media. This
meeting offers a global platform that focuses on the latest scientific advances to facilitate interdisciplinary
research. We propose in this application to host an Aging and Sleep conference for the first time in the United
States, in order to capitalize on the growing pool of interested researchers and traineesC4 in these domains.
Our organizing team has extensive experience based on prior iterations of the Aging and Sleep conference
(Drs. Fannie and Hakki Onen), and will be partnering with the sleep research programs at the University of
Pennsylvania (Drs. Allan Pack, Nalaka Gooneratne, Jini Naidoo).
Our specific aims are to: 1) Discuss recent research findings in the field of geriatric sleep disorders; 2) Create
networking/collaboration opportunities between researchers in the geriatric research and sleep research
communities; 3) Encourage trainee development through 10C4 travel awards for trainees and a specific session
on poster presentations/data-blitzC2 from new investigators; 4) Create an inclusive conference environment that
adequately represents minority/under-represented groups; and 5) Disseminate findings through a summary of
the conference, which will be published in the leading sleep/geriatric journals, and videosC5. The conference is
timely since it addresses the growing appreciation of the interplay between aging and sleep disorders, with a
thematic focus b...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10070694
- **Project number:** 1R13AG069597-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Nalaka S Gooneratne
- **Activity code:** R13 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $49,250
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-08-01 → 2021-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10070694

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10070694, Aging & Sleep 2020 (1R13AG069597-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10070694. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*