News and Updates

July 2023 update: 

Dr. Patterson presented at the recent SLEEP conference in Indianapolis, IN with an oral presentation entitled “Variability in Sleep and Eating are Associated with Subclinical Atherosclerosis in Early Adulthood”.

Doctoral student, Thomas Keiser, presented a poster titled “Daily and Weekly Exercise Regularity May Enhance Beneficial Effects of Exercise in Active Young Adults” at the annual meeting of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity in Uppsala, Sweden.

Dr. Hoopes published a manuscript in SLEEP entitled “Temporal associations between nightly sleep with daytime eating and activity levels in free-living young adults”. Read it here.

Doctoral student, Paige Laxton, published a manuscript in Autism entitled “Prevalence of current smoking and association with meeting 24-h movement guidelines: Results from a national convenience sample of autistic adults”. Read it here.

July 2022 update: 

Freda Patterson was recently selected to join the scientific review committee for the Sleep Research Society. The Sleep Research Society is an organization dedicated to promoting the science of sleep and related disorders, and the training of sleep researchers. The scientific review committee is charged with overseeing the Society’s grant funding programs.

Freda Patterson was recently selected to join a national American Academy of Sleep Medicine workgroup as part of a new, Centers for Disease Control funded, awareness program for obstructive sleep apnea. Dr. Patterson will serve on the Surveillance and Tool Development working group that is charged with developing and disseminating an indicator report for OSA, developing best practices around the screening and diagnosis of OSA, and the development and testing of new tools to surveil OSA and its risk factors. Read more here: https://aasm.org/cdc-awards-grant-american-academy-of-sleep-medicine-osa/

Lauren Covington recently received funding from Rockefeller University Heilbrunn Family Center for Research Nursing and Delaware CTR ACCEL Programto elucidate the dynamic, day-to-day associations between caregiver stress management (coping skills + emotional response to daily stressors) and caregiver-toddler sleep health in real-life settings. Under the primary mentorship of Dr. Freddie Patterson, and in collaboration with a community advisory board, measurement of pertinent socio-ecological stressors through ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and multi-dimensional sleep health assessed via actigraphy over 14-days, will guide family sleep health intervention development following the proposed study.

Elissa Hoopes will be presenting at the Virtual Seminar Series, hosted by the Sleep Research Society, on August 30^th, 2022. Her talk, entitled “Sleep & Cardiovascular Health in Young Adulthood,” is focused on the research conducted during her dissertation, where she evaluated sleep regularity and its relationship with biomarkers of cardiometabolic health in emerging adult college students. This seminar is available for viewing to all Sleep Research Society members. Click here for more information!

February 2022 update:

Dr. Hoopes recently received a Small Research Grant from the Sleep Research Society Foundation to support training in the assessment of dim light melatonin onset in humans, under the mentorship of Dr. Patterson and and Dr. Namni Goel of the Rush University Medical Center. The team also intends to incorporate this measure in their current study to better understand circadian rhythms and their association with heart disease risk.  Click here for a recent UDaily article with more information.

June 2021 update: 

Dr. Patterson serving as Guest Editor for Nutrients Special Issue
Dr. Patterson (along with Dr. Hollie Raynor, University of Tennessee – Knoxville) is serving as a Guest Editor for a Special Issue in Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643; IF 4.546), entitled “Interactive and bidirectional Associations between Sleep Health and Diet on Cardiometabolic Health.” The goal of this Special Issue is to share new information about the complex interplay between sleep health and diet on cardiometabolic health status at any point in the lifespan, and to expand this important field of inquiry. Original research articles and reviews are welcomed. The final deadline for submissions is December 26, 2021. For more information, please visit this website. 

April 2021 update:

Dr. Hoopes presents virtually at the 2021 Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting
Dr. Hoopes recently presented data from the ongoing Temple Lung Health Cohort Study, on the relationship between rest-activity rhythms and functional exercise capacity in Black/African Americans who are current smokers. See the video of her presentation below, and the published abstract here.