Lichuan Ye
Northeastern University, MA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) makes the airway collapse repeatedly during sleep. The main treatment is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), a mask that keeps the airway open with gentle air pressure.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
- Topics
obstructive sleep apnea
continuous positive airway pressure
treatment adherence
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Refine OurSleepKit, a couple-focused mobile health app for obstructive sleep apnea, through an iterative participatory design process using qualitative methods with patients and their partners.
- Test whether OurSleepKit improves use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in a 6-month randomized controlled trial of 180 couples with newly diagnosed sleep apnea.
- Evaluate how couples engage with OurSleepKit by tracking objective app usage and studying users' experiences in the intervention group.
More about the research
Many patients do not use it consistently, which leads to more illness, more deaths and higher health care costs. Current programs to improve CPAP use target only the patient and are mostly run by health professionals, with limited success. The PI's earlier project found that a patient's partner strongly affects CPAP use, for better or worse, and is involved in most of the factors that help or hinder it.
Why it matters
Better CPAP use could reduce the health risks and costs of obstructive sleep apnea. Because OurSleepKit draws on the daily support of a partner, it may produce lasting gains in treatment use. It could also be combined with other programs and serve as a model for apps that involve family members in managing chronic disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Devin L Brown
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine which obstructive sleep apnea endotypes, such as airway collapsibility, loop gain and arousal threshold, drive sleep apnea after stroke, and how they differ by ethnicity and from stroke-free participants, using polysomnography in the BASIC study.
Girardin Jean-Louis
University of Miami, FL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test in a randomized trial of 330 newly diagnosed older Black adults whether personalized web-based video messaging and coaching (PRAISE) increases adherence to positive airway pressure treatment for obstructive sleep apnea.
Louise O'Brien
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether an enhanced self-supported nasopharyngeal airway (ssNPA), a nasal stent that keeps the throat open, is acceptable to and tolerated by children with hypotonic upper airway obstruction and sleep apnea.
The school
Northeastern University: 27 labs on PI Pages, $347M a year on research, 251 research doctorates a year.
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