What is Sleep Advocacy?

Forty million Americans suffer with debilitating sleep disorders, and surveys show that an additional sixty million people experience sleep difficulties more than once per week. The cost to society is lost productivity, wasted medical resources, and a greatly reduced quality of life.

Even more distressing is the fragmented healthcare market which has had great difficulty in channeling resources back into the medical system to help identify and facilitate the management of the primary sleep problem. The paradigm needs to change. Sleep is not a cost center, but an unrecognized medical illness that, in the case of sleep apnea, will result in twice the consumption of medical resources when compared to a similar person without the sleep disorder.

The statistics are graphic. One hundred deaths per night are contributed to by sleep apnea alone. Three out of four people with Narcolepsy remain undiagnosed. The cost of sleep related traffic accidents exceed $64 billion per year. Drowsy drivers cause over 100,000 traffic accidents every year resulting in 6,000 traffic fatalities.

Untold billions of dollars are wasted by American business through lost productivity. What these statistics omit is the human cost of ruined lives and broken families caused by a disorder that will claim, in the case of sleep apnea, the lives of 40% of its sufferers within 10 years, if left untreated.

It is this backdrop that gave birth to the concept of TALK ABOUT SLEEP.

It has only been in the recent past that sleep disorders have received any degree of notoriety. Even to this day, many health insurance companies do not recognize sleep disorders as a mainstream health issue, providing little or no coverage for diagnosis and treatment. Social Security is very slow to grant disability coverage for sleep disorder issues while setting unrealistic thresholds by which treatment will be covered. Yet, we are talking about a condition shared by 40 million Americans. These facts gave rise to the TALK ABOUT SLEEP Advocacy Service Department.

The TALK ABOUT SLEEP advocacy mission is to increase sleep disorder awareness in both the public and medical professional communities. This will be achieved by coordinating efforts to "get the word" out through mass media vehicles. In addition, advocacy will provide members of the TALK ABOUT SLEEP Speaker's Bureau to address audiences worldwide on subjects ranging from legislative issues to sleep related productivity concerns in the workplace and other important topics. Advocacy Services is a highly focused group whose goal is to create global awareness of sleep disorders as a life issue. In general, the TALK ABOUT SLEEP Advocate is a friend of sleep who disseminates information, motivates groups and influences individuals regarding a wide variety of sleep related issues with the goal of forwarding sleep awareness.

To request additional information or to become involved, email advocacy@talkaboutsleep.com.