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American Academy of Sleep Medicine

• Established in 1975
• Membership of more than 9,500 physicians, scientists, and other health care professionals
• More than 2,300 AASM-accredited sleep centers across the U.S.
• AASM fact sheet

Sleep Medicine

• Sleep medicine is a medical specialty with more than 100 fellowship training programs in the U.S.
• The annual board-certification exam in sleep medicine is offered by six member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties: American Board of Internal Medicine, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, American Board of Pediatrics, American Board of Otolaryngology, American Board of Family Medicine, American Board of Anesthesiology.
• There are about 5,700 board-certified sleep medicine physicians in the U.S. (ABMS, 2024)

Adult Sleep Duration

• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults should sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. (AASM, 2015)
• About 30% of U.S. adults report getting an average of less than 7 hours of sleep per night. (CDC, 2022)
• Healthy sleep duration varies among states. The percentage of adults who reported sleeping at least 7 hours was lowest at 56.1% in Hawaii and highest at 71.6% in South Dakota. (CDC, 2016)
• The age-adjusted mean sleep duration of U.S. adults was 7.18 hours in a 24-hour period in 2012. (CDC, 2015)
• In 2012 about 70.1 million U.S. adults reported sleeping 6 hours or less. (CDC, 2015)
• Since 1985 the percentage of U.S. adults sleeping 6 hours or less has increased by 31%. (CDC, 2015)
• Poll data show that U.S. adults averaged 6.8 hours of sleep at night in 2013, down more than an hour from 1942. (Gallup, 2013)
• The percentage of U.S. adults who report that they usually sleep 7 or more hours at night decreased from 84% in 1942 to 59% in 2013. (Gallup, 2013)

Teen Sleep Duration

• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teens should sleep 8 to 10 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health. (AASM, 2016)
• About 77% of high school students report sleeping less than 8 hours on an average school night. (CDC, 2021)

Sleep Disorders

• 50 to 70 million Americans have a chronic sleep-wake disorder (The National Academies, 2006)
• There are more than 50 sleep-wake disorders classified in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders – Third Edition, Text Revision (AASM, 2023)

Insomnia

• About 30 to 35% of the population has transient insomnia symptoms. (AASM: ICSD-3, 2014)
• The one-year prevalence of short-term insomnia disorder (less than 3 months) among adults appears to be in the range of 15% to 20%. (AASM: ICSD-3, 2014)
• The full clinical syndrome of chronic insomnia disorder (at least 3 months) occurs in about 10% of the population. (AASM: ICSD-3, 2014)
• Health care spending on insomnia was $5.1 billion in 2013. (JAMA, 2016)
• In 2020, 6.3% of adults took any sleep medication to help them fall asleep or stay asleep every day in the last 30 days, 2.1% took medication most days, 10.0% took medication some days, and 81.6% never took medication. (CDC, 2023)
• About 4% of U.S. adults aged 20 and over used prescription sleep aids in the past month. (CDC, 2013)
• Chronic insomnia is associated with an average loss of 45-54 days in workplace productivity, resulting in estimated annual losses in national gross-domestic product ranging from 0.64% to 1.31%, or approximately $1.8 to $207.5 billion. (RAND, 2023)
• The total costs of insomnia in aggregate exceed $100 billion USD per year, with the majority being spent on indirect costs such as poorer workplace performance, increased health care utilization, and increased accident risk. (Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2016)
• Annual U.S. losses in work performance associated with insomnia equal to 252.7 million days and $63.2 billion after controlling for comorbidity. (Sleep, 2011)

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

• Nearly 30 million adults in the U.S. have obstructive sleep apnea, and about 23.5 million of them are undiagnosed. (AASM, 2016)
• Undiagnosed OSA costs the U.S. approximately $149.6 billion annually. (AASM, 2016)
• Obstructive sleep apnea patients who were adherent with positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy had a 25.7% reduction in health care utilization composite score. (Sleep Medicine, 2017)
• Treatment of obstructive sleep apnea with PAP therapy is estimated to reduce the 10-year risk of motor vehicle crashes by 52%, the 10-year expected number of heart attacks by 49%, and the 10-year risk of stroke by 31%. (Sleep, 2011)

Drowsy Driving

• Each year in the U.S. drowsy driving causes an average of 328,000 motor vehicle accidents, including 6,400 fatal crashes. (AAA Foundation, 2014)
• Nearly 1 in 3 drivers (32 percent) say they have driven when they were so tired that they had a hard time keeping their eyes open in the past 30 days. (AAA Foundation, 2016)
• Drivers who usually sleep for less than 5 hours daily had 5.4 times the crash rate of drivers who reported that they usually slept for 7 hours or more. (AAA Foundation, 2016)