Putting South African sleep science on the map
Arron Correia and Pip Forshaw, final-year PhD students within the Chronobiology and Sleep Laboratory, are also the first staff of spin-off company Sleep Science (Pty) Ltd.
Often joking about the fact that they come as a ‘package deal’, Arron and Pip are proponents of academic collaboration, even gathering data for their PhD theses among the exact same cohort.
“We’re working with a group of men and women in Khayalitsha, but focusing on different areas affected by sleep,” Arron explains.
While her research looks at the impact living in a low income, high crime environment can have on sleep and mental health, Pip’s work focuses on the more physical aspect of how living and sleeping in a stressful environment affects blood pressure and the risk for developing cardiovascular disease. In terms of data gathering, they both measure habitual sleep in the home environment using a wearable sleep monitor; and while Arron monitors heart rate variability over a 24-hour period. Forshaw tracks blood pressure over the same period. Their innovative approaches using multiple technological devices to assess sleep and health is providing cutting-edge, first-of-its kind rich data in African-origin adults.
Both women have access to this very special cohort through the ‘Modelling the Epidemiologic Transition Study’ (METS), a five-country longitudinal project that has been going since 2010, led by Prof Lara Dugas.
They also work closely with two field workers, Nandipha Sinyanya and Monwabisi Tyuthu, who play an integral role in distributing and collecting their respective monitors from the cohort on a regular basis. Their knowledge of the study setting and personal connection with each and every participants makes their studies possible. “It takes a village! It’s certainly not a one-person job or even a two-person job. It takes many, many,” says Pip.
“Collaboration is key. It’s absolutely crucial to have support and help and people to bounce ideas off – from our field workers to peers to professors. We’re super lucky to have all of that and more in our Department.”
Juggling studies and sleep consultation
Apart from their studies, Arron and Pip also both work as sleep consultants at UCT’s spin-out company, Sleep Science.
Headed up by Dr Dale Rae, Sleep Science offers a bouquet of services for the public that include sleep assessments and coaching, educational talks and workshops, and sleep health screening for companies as part of employee wellness programmes. Sleep Science also conducts contract sleep-related research and has a special interest in working with tech companies to understand and interpret the information provided from wearable devices that track sleep.
“Sleep kind of feels like the next big thing,” says Arron. “Everyone’s done diet, exercise, mental health and now they’re starting to realise that sleep is a metric that should be prioritised in terms of health and wellbeing.”
Harnessing the power of wearable devices, the Sleep Science team is able to monitor and assess clients’ sleep as a means to understand the nature of their sleep challenges, and offer suggestions for next steps to help them improve their sleep health. This could include anything from experimenting with mindfulness exercises to referral other specialists for sleep apnoea assessment and management, for example.
As sleep consultants, Arron and Pip play a hands-on role in every aspect of the business – from education and communication to one-on-one sleep assessments to administration and finance.
“What I love about the work that Pip and Arron do at Sleep Science, is that they get to apply the learnings and knowledge generated by our research group to real-world scenarios. This makes their academic work relevant and meaningful, and their passion for their work is clear“, says Dale.
“Ultimately, we want our spin-off company, Sleep Science, to be the world leader in sleep services, backed by top-class research,” concludes Pip. “If someone needs something related to sleep, we want Sleep Science to be their first port of call.”
Putting South African sleep science on the map
Although juggling work and studies can be challenging, they’re determined to put South African sleep science research on the map. “We’re excited to get our academic work out there, especially because so much of what we know about sleep is mostly based on information from the global north,” explains Forshaw. “It’s high time we shed some light on the situation in South Africa, because what we’re seeing is that it is so vastly different to the rest of the world.”
Set to present their research at the World Sleep 2023 conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the end of October, it’s safe to say that both women are already making their mark.