Podcast Interview Transcript

Abstract

Podcast Interview Transcript Madelyn H. Labella, Janelle Leppa, and Larkin Strong Welcome to Progress in Community Health Partnerships’latest episode of our Beyond the Manuscript podcast. In each volume of the Journal, the editors select one article for our Beyond the Manuscript post-study interview with the authors. Beyond the Manuscript provides the authors the opportunity to tell listeners what they would want to know about the project beyond what went into the final manuscript. In this episode of Beyond the Manuscript, Associate Editor, Larkin Strong, interviews Madelyn Labella and Janelle Leppa, authors of “Promoting Resilience by Improving Children’s Sleep: Feasibility among Families Living in Supportive Housing.” Your browser does not support the audio tag. Beyond the Manuscript. Click to hear audio Larkin Strong: Well, thank you Janelle and Madelyn for joining me in this interview. We’ll go ahead and get started. So the first question is that the manuscript describes how the partnership was initiated by the Simpson Housing Services staff who approached researchers at the University of Minnesota. Could you please talk more about how this happened and how the partnership came to be? Madelyn Labella: Sure, this is Madelyn. I am a doctoral candidate at the University, so I am on that side of things. And I was put in touch with Janelle by my academic advisor Ann Masten, who does a lot of research on understanding what helps children and families who are dealing with housing instability – homelessness or frequent moves – what helps them to be successful and resilient. And she had really identified self-regulation as one of those big factors and Janelle can talk a little bit more about how that sparked her interests and made her want to get connected to our research team. Janelle Leppa: Yes, thank you Madelyn. So, this is Janelle and yes at Simpson Housing Services we have been long fans of Dr. Masten and the amazing research team that she works with. They’ve done – I guess they’ve made enormous contributions towards work – really looking at the unique needs that children who’ve experienced homelessness have experienced and so, it’s something that we had benefitted from greatly. And I had the opportunity to run into Dr. Ann Masten at some point and we initiated a conversation around you know, kind of philosophy around her research, what some of their findings have been and just thought we really should get to know each other better and so I think there was some observation on both parts. She sent some of her research team to some of our family events and also we—my staff and I—had the opportunity to go and observe some of their, not sure what the word would be, some of maybe like a workshop in progress with families. [End Page 295] Janelle Leppa: And so I really had a high level of confidence going in and so I’m not sure, Madelyn, I’m not sure if it was with you, but I initially talked with somebody about how over and over again, I am hearing from parents that sleep is a struggle. Sleep – transitioning from an environment where families were sleeping in shelters often meant that families were in one room sleeping together and it was challenging to make a transition to sleeping maybe in a situation where you know the mom or dad had a room and the kids were in different spaces. A lot of just, you know children moving from place to place can throw a wrench in routine and so families struggled there. But also just how to settle before bed and I saw an amazing webinar, I think it was called like “Sleepless in America,” and it made these incredible connections between what just one or two hours left of sleep a night, how that can really impact a child in their motor mechanics and like their ability to focus. And it was just like seeing so many of the concerns that parents had raised and of course academics—children who...