Neighborhood Differences in Omnipresent Policing and Sleep Health in NYC

The purpose of this research is to understand neighborhood factors, including police surveillance, associated with sleep health among adult residents of New York City. This will be accomplished by conducting a baseline survey of 160 residents and a daily diary with a randomly selected subset of residents.

Through this research we hope to disentangle the extent to which residents of particular neighborhoods share similarities amongst themselves, while being distinct from residents of neighborhoods with different levels of segregation, in terms of their police experiences and sleep health.

Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.

Study Investigators: Martin Downing and Mia Budescu

Research Team: Nicole Holbrook, Z-Quana Powell-Jones, Marion Juarez Rivas

Omnipresent Policing and Sleep Health in the Bronx

For this project, CUNY faculty mentors worked with undergraduate student research assistants to collect and analyze street-intercept survey and focus group data to explore the potential impact of police surveillance on residents’ sleep health in the Bronx.

The project received support from the Lehman College Student Research Advisory Board and CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI).

Presentations:

Abdou, Z., Downing, M., Budescu, M., Gonzalez, T., & Gregory, K. (2023, April). Emotional reactions to police surveillance and the association with insomnia among a sample of Bronx residents. Poster presentation at the Lehman College Student Research Advisory Board conference. Bronx, NY. References.

Downing, M. J., Jr., Budescu, M., Gonzalez, T., Gregory, K., Ortega, D., Vitiello, S., & Ramos, L. (2023, August). Sleep health, stress, and neighborhood perceptions of crime, safety, and walkability in the Bronx. Poster presentation at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC. References. Awarded Outstanding Poster Presentation by the Society for Health Psychology, Division 38 of the American Psychological Association.