(May 2, 2024) — Dr. Anuj Chandra recently visited the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC with a group of sleep medicine thought leaders to advocate for issues that affect the sleep health of people throughout the United States, such as ending Daylight Savings Time, expanding tele-health, and improving oversight of medical device recalls.
“It seems like healthy sleep is under threat from every direction these days,” said Dr. Chandra. “It’s a privilege to go to Washington, DC and advocate for sleep for the entire country.”
He points out that a recent Gallup poll — highlighted by two articles from Associated Press and The Atlantic — showed that Americans know they aren’t getting enough sleep. But that awareness doesn’t mean they know what to do about the problem.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/04/how-america-lost-sleep/678189/
“There’s no shortage of awareness that sleep is important and people know they need help,” Dr. Chandra added, “Sleep specialists like me are constantly helping individual patients deal with threats to healthy sleep, but physicians can’t do it alone. We need our legislators to help.”
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine organized the April trip to Washington, DC, in which eight different groups of sleep specialists met with legislators advocating for several issues:
- Replacing the annual shift to Daylight Savings Time by introducing legislation for permanent standard time. “Spring and Fall time changes are not just disruptive, they are actually dangerous. They contribute to measurable increases in driving accidents, workplace accidents, heart attacks, and poor school performance,” said Dr. Chandra.
- The Connect for Health Act of 2023 is designed to build on the tele-health expansions — including in sleep medicine — that started during the Covid-19 pandemic to increase access to remote consultations, monitoring and follow-up. “Telehealth was a lifeline during the pandemic, but it is still extremely important for patients who might be many miles away from a provider or just have difficulty with traveling,” said Dr. Chandra.
- The Medical Device Recall Improvement Act was introduced in 2023 to improve patient safety by enhancing oversight of medical device recalls. “This legislation would require stricter monitoring and recall procedures for sleep-related devices like CPAP machines. We really need this to help protect patients,” said Dr. Chandra.