Professor Niro Siriwardena, director of CAHRU, attended a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) topic advisory workshop on sleep, health and wellbeing. The event was hosted by NICE and chaired by Professor Colin Espie, Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.
Attendees were invited experts on sleep and insomnia including sleep scientists, clinical respiratory specialists, public health experts interested in problems of insomnia at various ages from around the United Kingdom. Delegates contributed to discussions about the importance of sleep at various ages, the effects of insomnia on health and the public health implications of poor sleep. The main outcome of the meeting was agreement that sleep was an important public health issue and that NICE would consider developing a public health guideline for insomnia.
Professor Siriwardena and the CaHRU team have been working over the past few years on studies aimed at improving primary care for insomnia. This will be the topic of a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine, London, where experts from the UK and US will discuss ‘CBT for insomnia disorder: evidence base and practical implementation methods‘ on 19 November 2005.