The Global Observatory of Long-Term Care (GOLTC) is a new platform to facilitate cross-national learning to improve and strengthen care systems. It builds on the experience of sharing evidence and facilitating collaboration of the LTCcovid.org website. The Observatory aims to continue to identify shared challenges in relation to Long-Term Care and showcase how different countries and localities are addressing them, sharing research evidence and supporting collaborations. The Observatory is part of the International Long-Term Care Policy Network (ILPN).

We are building the platform contents and activities gradually, with the aim of launching it formally at the next ILPN conference planned for September 2024.

The website has been structured has been around key topics in Long-Term Care, tools and methods to address these topics, and geographical areas, and for each of these you can find experts interested in those topics, tools or areas, research projects, interest groups, publications and events.

How to take part:

Create an expert profile:

If you work on Long-Term Care research, policy or advocacy you can create an expert profile using this form: https://goltc.org/add-new-expert, this will enable you to share your expertise, publications and interests and join existing interest groups.

Register your research projects:

You can also share your research projects on Long-Term Care (ongoing and completed) through a searchable International Long-Term Care Research Projects Registry using this link: https://goltc.org/add-new-project/. This will generate a simple webpage for each project to which you can later add publications and other outputs.

Join or run an Interest Group:

A key way to engage actively with the Observatory is by participating in (or volunteering to lead) Special Interest Groups, these groups have a dedicated space on the website from where they can share relevant publications, resources and host webinars. The groups can be on any topic, research method or geographical area relevant to Long-Term Care and will be led by a steering group who will aim to organise three or four webinars a year and share useful resources. We have a growing number of groups live on the website so far, see for example: Data Science, Quasi-Experimental Methods and Strengthening Responses to Dementia.

Contribute to system profiles and topic and methods guides:

We are also developing Long-Term Care system profiles, so far we have great examples for Costa-Rica, Greece and Japan and there are a few more under preparation. Similarly, we are getting ready to share brief guides to key LTC topics and methods, if you are interested in contributing any of these please us know.

Share your news, publications and events:

Finally, the Observatory can share relevant publication and events, which will be included in a monthly newsletter.

If you would like to take part in interest groups, writing LTC system profiles or topic guides, or would like to share news, publication and events, please email n.salehi@lse.ac.uk.

About Long-Term Care: we mean all forms of care and support that enable people with losses of capacity to live in accordance to their basic rights and human dignity. This includes care provided at home, in the community and in congregate settings (such as care homes and hospitals), care that is paid and unpaid, formal and informal, and can involve activities, service and devices that aim to prevent losses of function, to rehabilitate, maintain social participation, support with daily activities, and end of life care.