Stony Brook Professor Editor of Award Winning Sleep Journal

Dr. Hale holding editions of the Sleep Health Journal.

By Lindsay Andarakis and Katarina Delgado
The American Association of Publishers awarded Best New Journal in Science, Technology and Medicine earlier this month to an academic journal edited by Stony Brook professor, Dr. Lauren Hale.

Associate Professor, Dr. Lauren Hale, is the founding editor-in-chief for Sleep Health: he Journal of the National Sleep Foundation. The prestigious award was given out during the AAP’s 2016 PROSE awards.

“The review process is extensive and in-depth, and so it is no small feat for a journal to be named a PROSE winner,” Kate Kolendo, the Project Manager of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers, said.

The full judging panel met for two days in early January to decide on the winners. This year’s awards received a total of 551 entries, which broke a record from when the awards began four decades ago. These entries were submitted from 70 publishers worldwide. The award is a recognition of the “very best in professional and scholarly publishing,” according to the PROSE award website.

The Sleep Health Journal was a standout, Kolendo said. The entries of the journal are considered by members of the AAP’s Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division’s Journals Committee as well as subject specialists.


“There’s so many good faculty here that when there’s an award or national recognition it shows how good some of these faculty are,” Greg Filano, the Media Relations Manager at Stony Brook’s School of Medicine, said. “It’s good for the school and it’s good for the University.”

The journal includes articles by various authors on topics like the connection between sleep and kidney health, new sleep duration recommendations and sleep’s relation to psychological health in women. One of the contributors to the Sleep Health Journal was Dr. Rebecca Robbins, who is a fellow at the Center for Health Behavior Change at the New York University School of Medicine. Her contribution to this edition of the journal was titled, “Social conversation and its relationship to sleep behavior among college students.”

“Our research examined conversations college students reported about the topic of sleep to ultimately better understand social influence on this vital health behavior,” Robbins said. “We found negative conversations were strong predictors of poor sleep, and initial evidence that social norms may form through these conversations and be a strong factor predicting poor sleep behaviors.”

Another contributor to the award winning journal, Meir Kryger, wrote multiple pieces. For each new edition of the Sleep Health Journal there is a piece of art featured on the cover that the Art Director, Kryger wrote an article commenting on this art. The most recent edition’s painting was Henri Rousseau’s The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897. He stated that there are certain themes that repeat themselves as artists tackle the topic of sleep, including rest, danger, lust and mythology.

In addition to contributing his art writings to the journal, for this edition, Kryger worked with Daniel Mansfield, on an important piece titled, “Regulating danger on the highways: hours of service regulations.” In it Kryger explained that when truck drivers that are operating large tractor trailers are drowsy, we are left with a very dangerous and potentially fatal situation.

Researched topics like this one fill the latest edition of the journal that was recognized as Best New Journal in Science, Technology and Medicine by the American Association of Publishers. Future editions of the journal will dig deeper into understanding sleep and its impact on health and society.

“Winning the Best New Journal award is wonderful recognition of the important work of Sleep Health,” says Tom Clifford, National Sleep Foundation Vice President of Marketing & Development. “The National Sleep Foundation believed there was a need for a journal that would extend sleep research across many diverse, related fields. It’s great to know that our peers agree.”