Building ecosystems of person-centered integrated care through co-creation

ongoing

The significant increase of the older (65+) European population with complex care needs calls for a better integration and coordination between health care and social services. Existing socio-economic and gendered inequalities in LTC might worsen in the future due to demographic ageing and austerity measures in LTC provision. So far, person-centered integrated care (PC-IC), as one solution to tackle these challenges, has mostly been developed in a top-down logic, and community engagement and participatory co-design have hardly been explored to develop PC-IC solutions. The aim of BUILD is to develop a framework and toolbox that assists policy makers in implementing participatory co-design and community engagement as methods to develop socially inclusive and sustainable PC-IC solutions for older adults with complex care needs that can be evaluated by the social return on investment. BUILD will increase the understanding of PC-IC by mapping and analyzing existing eco-systems of IC across Europe and identifying their corresponding regulatory frameworks and current challenges. BUILD will then go beyond these challenges by conducting a longitudinal, cross-national study that investigates care integration on a practical level, developing scientific evidence on how social inequalities shape the access to, and the outcomes of diverse forms of care and their integration while also highlighting the needs and required skills for PC-IC from the patients’ and caregivers’ perspective. Throughout the project, BUILD will involve communities, older adults with complex care needs, in-/formal caregivers, stakeholders and policy makers on different regulatory levels in the participatory co-design of PC-IC solutions and develop policy recommendations based on the experiences gathered. Ultimately, BUILD will develop a co-design framework and toolbox, as the main outcome of the project, that supports the implementation of PC-IC through co-design and community engagement.