NHLBI Celebrates Women Scientists

Dayna Johnson, Ph.D., M.P.H.

March 06, 2019

Dayna Johnson wants us all to sleep better, and part of her public health approach is to help figure out how to eliminate health disparities associated with poor sleep. Johnson, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, was inspired to pursue a career in sleep research partly through serendipity. Several years ago, she listened to now-NHLBI director Gary Gibbons, M.D., discuss the link between sleep and cardiovascular disease at a scientific conference. She was fascinated. “Prior to Dr. Gibbon’s talk, I was unaware that there was a strong connection between poor sleep and cardiovascular disease. I decided to make sleep the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation, and have pursued this topic ever since.” She would later join forces with noted sleep expert Susan Redline, M.D., who served as her mentor, to continue her studies in sleep epidemiology. To date, Johnson has led pivotal studies to better understand sleep in African-Americans. In one study funded by NHLBI, her team found an alarmingly high prevalence of undiagnosed sleep apnea, a common disorder that blocks the upper airways and causes people to stop breathing during sleep. In a related NHLBI-funded study, her research team found that African-Americans with sleep apnea are twice as likely to develop high blood pressure when their sleep apnea goes untreated, a finding that could help explain why black people suffer hypertension at rates higher than other groups. These findings shed light on the role of sleep in African-Americans, a historically understudied group that has among the highest rates of cardiovascular disease. Johnson hopes her research eventually leads to new tools and systems for diagnosing and treating sleep problems in this group as well as others.