1KHO 881: School Should Start Much Later | Dr. Joseph Dzierzewski, The National Sleep Foundation

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I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And we are going to be talking today about something that is incredibly important because almost half of children in the United States are not consistently getting the recommended sleep for their age. Here to talk about that is Dr. Joseph Dierzewski, and he is representing The National Sleep Foundation, but you have, which is a non-profit which is dedicated to improving health and well-being by advancing sleep health. Your background is incredible. You've done over 400 scholarly works, 170 peer-reviewed publications, multiple edited volumes and chapters of books, more than 250 scientific presentations. In fact, you have been identified as the most published author in the field of sleep in older adults. Can you talk about your interest in the field of sleep and how you ended up being in such an important part of all this research?

**Joseph Dzierzewski** (1:57)
Well, first, thanks for having us, and thanks for having NSF to talk about something that's so important, and I think often overlooks. I'm really excited for the hour and to talk about sleep and sleep in children. And I might even pull in some personal experience. I have a four and a six-year-old, you know, so we talk about sleep and we live the life over here.
In terms of the work that I've done, when people say 170 peer-reviewed publications or editing a book, those things are important and I think they're great.
But there's often this disconnect in academia where you'll publish stuff in academic journals and outlets.
And they're read by other academics, maybe, maybe.
Certainly not read by a lot of people outside of academia. So I think all that's important and I think it's great. But I think probably a bigger thing to think about and something that everyone should be considering is the reach and the impact of scholarly work. And that's a place where National Sleep Foundation shines. And it's something that drew me out of my old academic role and kind of gave me the courage to leave a tenured hard money position, which is kind of the holy grail in academia, and move to a nonprofit space, you know, four or five years ago. So National Sleep Foundation runs a couple of annual campaigns, week long campaigns. And these things result in four or five, six billion impressions reaching a couple hundred million people in a week span. To me, that's reach, that's impact, and that's kind of the honor and the privilege of doing science. My path, as you asked, and how I became interested in sleep, psychology is unique and is different than medicine. So to get into a graduate program in psychology, and I'm a clinical psychologist by trade in training, I have my PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Florida. Go Gators, shout out. You really specialize from the start. So you apply to work with specific mentors.
And so from the start, your mentor has a specialty. So you come into a graduate program, and day one, you start learning about anxiety in children or OCD in adults, and you form a niche and you form this expertise. You can always re-specialize and grow and expand. But I knew from the beginning, I wanted to do something that reached everyone, that was boundless, that was timeless, that would always be important. And even before I became a sleep clinician or a sleep scientist, I was a person, I lived life. And I knew what it felt like when I didn't sleep well. And I knew what it felt like when I did sleep well. So the idea of going into graduate school and specializing in something that actually instead of doing this to your career trajectory, does the opposite, I think was, was just an epiphany. And then as soon as I got in and you start reading about sleep or you start working with people, you start studying it more, it's drinking the Kool-Aid. You just get hooked in. There's so much exciting stuff happening in the field that you just keep going and going and going. So we went from graduate school to clinical internship to an advanced fellowship. My first faculty position at UCLA in the School of Medicine. Then this tenured position at Virginia Commonwealth University where I had my own lab, trained my own grad students, published the federal grants, the director of the concentration for behavioral medicine, and then had the honor and privilege to step into this new role. So it's been a journey. It's been winding. There's been a lot of hard work, a lot of passion has to fuel it, a lot of support from loved ones. But it's been wonderful.