Sleep education in Hong Kong

Sleep is one of the basic human needs with a vital role in normal development and growth. However, sleep loss is a prevalent problem among school children and adolescents, leading to multiple academic and health consequences. Children and adolescents in Hong Kong who are under greater academic pressure and stress are found to sleep lesser than their western counterparts. Several local studies consistently demonstrated that Hong Kong schoolers are sleep deprived during school days with extensive sleep compensation during weekends. To combat this prevalent situation, sleep education program aiming at promoting healthy sleep practices is needed. This paper will review the rationale, efficacy and experiences of our large-scale school-based sleep education program in Hong Kong. In summary, our group conducted a clustered randomized school-based educational program with multilevel and multimodal sleep education program including town hall seminar, small class teachings, slogan and painting competitions and development of a sleep education website. The findings of our study conducted in the secondary schools suggested that school-based sleep education program was effective in increasing sleep knowledge, improving behaviors and psychological health as well as healthy lifestyle practice in adolescents, but it did not improve the sleep-wake pattern of the adolescents.