Consensus meeting for Standards in Implementing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategies into Canadian Sleep Research (March 2025, Montreal, QC)

We know that sleep is a vital determinant of health and improving sleep improves the lives of Canadians (Chaput et al., 2022). However, what we know about sleep is based on research with inadequate consideration of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Therefore, there are gaps in understanding the sleep of all Canadian. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) mandate consideration of EDI in health research because Canadians can be left behind if research is not representative and inclusive. We formed a Health Disparity Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (HD-EDI) Committee to study how sleep research can better reflect all Canadians, and uncovered EDI measurement issues in many population-based Canadian surveys, and analytic strategy issues that could create greater health disparity for marginalized groups. We surveyed EDI frameworks and developed recommendations for an inclusive set of demographic variables relevant to sleep health and related explanatory variables (i.e., discrimination). We want to finalize this process in a Consensus meeting (March 2025) with interdisciplinary EDI and sleep researchers, collaborators and members of groups who experience systemic discrimination, to reach consensus on best practices for sleep research (i.e., recruitment, asking about identities/demographic variables, variables known to interact with demographic variables (e.g., discrimination and neighbourhood variables)). After the meeting, we will disseminate the proposed guidelines in: a high impact open journal; a workshop that provides practical guidance on using the guidelines, and an infographic posted on far-reaching websites and social media of those at the meeting (Sleep Research Society, Public Health Agency of Canada). This meeting's impact will be far-reaching, and will help Canadian sleep experts bring their research in line with CIHR's EDI mandate. Without a sleep-specific roadmap to address EDI we cannot truly move Canadian sleep research forward.