Enhancing Quality of Life for Individuals with Stroke (EQL): a study protocol for co-creating a social support and context-informed intervention to improve self-management, health and well-being in older adults recovering at home

Introduction Enhancing Quality of Life for Individuals with Stroke (EQL-stroke) is an international, collaborative multiphase project aiming to strengthen supported self-management for older adults recovering from stroke at home in Sweden, Latvia and the Netherlands. Existing poststroke pathways may provide insufficient support for self-management during the transition from hospital to home, and there is limited evidence on interventions that integrate social networks and everyday environmental context.

Methods and analysis EQL-stroke uses a participatory, multimethod design across three phases. Phase I generates knowledge through policy review, qualitative interviews and people - place mapping (~25 participants per country) and includes cross-cultural adaptation of the Collective Efficacy of Networks Scale.

Phase II co-designs and specifies a tailored social network-informed supported self-management intervention (the Network-Based Intervention), including core components and principles for local adaptation (~15 participants per country). Phase III will recruit approximately 20 - 40 stroke survivors for a single-arm pilot feasibility study with an 8-week follow-up and embedded process evaluation to assess feasibility, acceptability and fidelity in routine practice.