Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine

Translation and Implementation of Behavioral Sleep Medicine

Sleep and circadian health are increasingly recognized as central to physical health, mental wellbeing, workplace functioning, and overall quality of life. Over the past two decades, behavioral sleep medicine has generated a strong evidence base demonstrating the effectiveness of behavioral, psychological, and lifestyle-based interventions for improving sleep across a range of populations and settings. Approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), workplace sleep programs, digital sleep interventions, and community-based sleep health initiatives have shown considerable promise in both clinical and non-clinical contexts. However, despite these advances, many evidence-based sleep interventions remain difficult to access or are not routinely integrated into real-world practice. This Article Collection, Translation and Implementation of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, aims to bring together interdisciplinary research focused on how behavioral sleep medicine interventions can be effectively translated, implemented, scaled, and sustained across healthcare, occupational, digital, and community settings.

This topic is particularly timely given the growing global burden of poor sleep and circadian disruption and their links with mental health difficulties, chronic illness, workplace fatigue, accidents, reduced productivity, and widening health inequalities. While behavioral sleep interventions are increasingly supported by evidence, significant challenges remain in ensuring that these interventions are accessible, engaging, equitable, and feasible to deliver in everyday settings. Many groups, including shift workers, underserved populations, and individuals experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, continue to face barriers to accessing evidence-based sleep support. At the same time, healthcare systems and organizations are under increasing pressure to identify scalable, cost-effective approaches that can improve population wellbeing and reduce pressure on services. Advances in implementation science, digital health, co-production, and behavioral medicine provide important opportunities to bridge the gap between research and practice, ensuring that effective sleep interventions can achieve meaningful real-world impact.

This Article Collection welcomes interdisciplinary contributions exploring the translation, dissemination, implementation, and real-world application of behavioral sleep medicine interventions. Topics of interest include behavioral sleep interventions, CBT-I implementation, workplace sleep programs, shift worker interventions, digital sleep health, community and public health approaches to sleep promotion, and sleep health equity. We also encourage submissions focusing on prevention, behavior change, co-production, engagement and adherence, implementation barriers and facilitators, healthcare integration, scalability, dissemination, and policy or systems-level approaches. The Collection particularly welcomes research examining how behavioral sleep interventions can be embedded into routine practice across clinical, occupational, educational, and community contexts. We invite a range of article types consistent with the journal’s scope, including original research articles (quantitative and qualitative), reviews, meta-analyses and meta-regression analyses, implementation studies, protocols/registered reports, methodological papers, and brief reports (pilot acceptability and feasibility studies).

Please contact Dr. MK Huffman at [email protected] with any queries about discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Dr. Talar Moukhtarian is an Assistant Professor at University of Warwick whose work focuses on sleep, mental health, and behavioral interventions. Her research combines clinical psychology, behavioral science, and co-production approaches to develop preventative and accessible interventions for workplaces, schools, and the wider community. She has expertise in ADHD, digital mental health, sleep and circadian health, eating disorders, and women’s wellbeing in academia, with experience leading interdisciplinary and stakeholder-driven research projects. Talar has secured competitive research funding, published extensively across mental health and behavioral medicine, and is particularly interested in translating research into real-world impact through scalable interventions.

Dr. Moukhtarian declares no conflict of interest regarding this work.