Morhaf Al Achkar
Wayne State University, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research
Most people treated for cancer sleep badly, and that poor sleep feeds fatigue, weaker day-to-day functioning and lower quality of life. Cancer clinics rarely screen for it.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Education Research
- Topics
insomnia
obstructive sleep apnea
sleep medicine
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Co-design a team-based sleep care pathway for oncology clinics with patients and staff through rapid build-test-refine cycles, finalizing universal screening steps, care-manager roles and warm handoffs, dashboards and checklists.
- Produce clear patient materials in English, Arabic and Spanish plus a brief clinic training kit so the pathway can be adopted within normal oncology visit flow.
- Pilot the pathway with 15 to 20 patients at one NCI-designated clinic, measuring reach via screening and enrollment, timeliness of starting cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, fidelity via positive airway pressure use and follow-up completion, and acceptability.
- Measure changes in insomnia severity, fatigue and adherence to positive airway pressure over roughly three months in patients with co-occurring insomnia and sleep apnea, to size and inform a larger trial.
- Coordinate and evaluate cancer research training activities spanning high school students through faculty and community providers, identifying gaps and opportunities across the training continuum.
More about the research
Work here focuses on a particularly damaging combination, insomnia together with obstructive sleep apnea (breathing repeatedly stopping during sleep), known as COMISA, and asks how routine cancer care could detect and treat it. The second grant is a cancer center's coordination of research training and education across career stages.
Why it matters
Sleep problems in people with cancer are common but frequently missed, leaving fatigue and reduced functioning untreated; untreated insomnia with sleep apnea is also linked to high blood pressure, heart disease and higher mortality. A workable clinic pathway with screening, behavioral therapy for insomnia and airway-pressure support could improve sleep and energy for cancer survivors and, if feasible here, be spread to other cancer centers. The training component aims to strengthen the cancer research workforce from high school through faculty.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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.
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.
The school
Wayne State University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $292M a year on research, 194 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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