# A Preventive Care Approach to Mitigate the Impact of Pediatric ALL Treatment on Sleep

> **NIH NIH R03** · DANA-FARBER CANCER INST · 2021 · $89,000

## Abstract

Project Summary
Over 50% of pediatric cancer patients report problems with their sleep, characterized by insomnia disorder
symptoms. This results in considerable physical and psychosocial morbidity, including behavioral
dysregulation, increased anxiety and depression, obesity, and early diabetes. Despite evidence in general
pediatrics demonstrating that preventive parental education interventions are highly effective at improving child
sleep and family well-being, there have been no published studies of interventions designed to prevent or
reduce this prevalent late effect of cancer therapy. Building on our findings that early on during a child’s cancer
treatment, overwhelmed parents employ short-term coping strategies that disrupt long-term sleep, we propose
to develop an insomnia prevention program that provides early intervention. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia
(ALL) is the most common childhood cancer with overall survival rates of 90% in the context of standardized
chemotherapy regimens that are known to disturb sleep. ALL patients thus are an ideal patient population in
which to first develop such an intervention given the vast majority will be long-term survivors. Since their life-
saving cancer treatment protocols cannot be altered, how the child and their family respond to these medical
disruptions to sleep plays a critical role in how severe acute sleep problems are and how long they persist. Our
multi-disciplinary research team will leverage the uniform care delivery setting of the Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute ALL Consortium clinical trial Protocol 16-001, including its unprecedented parent-reported
socioeconomic status (SES) data, to develop an insomnia-prevention intervention targeted to the specific
needs of children living in low-SES households. Our specific aims are to: (1) identify modifiable sleep
behaviors in a cohort of pediatric ALL patients during maintenance therapy; (2) develop a preventive insomnia
intervention that reduces the negative impact of pediatric ALL treatment on sleep; (3) evaluate the acceptability
and feasibility of the novel intervention. We will conduct a single-arm trial of the preventive intervention in a
sample of N=30 families of low-SES pediatric ALL patients to determine the acceptability and feasibility of the
novel protocol. This will serve as the critical first step to the next step of our goal to conduct a fully powered
multi-center trial. Insomnia is a known problem for pediatric cancer patients that often develops during
treatment and can persist for decades after cancer therapy has ended. Knowledge from this innovative
proposal will shift the current model that insomnia is an expected late effect of treatment for the majority of
pediatric ALL patients. We are committed to the clinical care model that “it is better to prevent diseases than to
concentrate resources on treating diseases after they become clinically apparent.” By translating evidence into
clinical practice for childhood cancer patien...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10201866
- **Project number:** 1R03CA259894-01
- **Recipient organization:** DANA-FARBER CANCER INST
- **Principal Investigator:** Kira O. Bona
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $89,000
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-04-01 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10201866

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10201866, A Preventive Care Approach to Mitigate the Impact of Pediatric ALL Treatment on Sleep (1R03CA259894-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10201866. Licensed CC0.

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