As the last event of our Jour Fixe lecture series in 2023, Adelina Comas-Herrera from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) hold a lecture on Friday, December 15. Among others, she presented the Global Observatory of Long-Term Care (GOLTC).
The GOLTC is a platform to facilitate cross-national learning to improve and strengthen care systems. It aims 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), at the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC) at the LSE. It is funded partly by CPEC and has received a funding award from LSE Innovation.
Furthermore, Adelina Comas-Herrera presented several care-related research projects building on the Theory of Change. The Theory of Change is an outcomes-based approach which describes how a programme brings about specific outcomes through a logical sequence of intermediate outcomes. Applying it as a tool for research it can facilitate policy evaluation and development in that it looks not only at the current status and the process outcome but conceptualizes the – often black- boxed – process steps in between in detail. Adelina Comas-Herrera has applied the Theory of Change approach both in an international contest as well as in research on long-term care in the United Kingdom. For instance, in the STRiDE project, the Theory of Change was used to generate research and policy maps for seven low- and middle-income countries with the aim that people with dementia and their carers live well and their social and health risks are mitigated. In doing so, stakeholder workshops in each country developed goals and steps to strengthen the countries’ response to dementia, including for example the adoption of a national dementia strategy or informal and formal carer training.
Adelina Comas-Herrera is Director of the Global Observatory of Long-Term Care at the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre, LSE. She is co-lead of the Strengthening Responses to Dementia in Developing Countries (STRiDE) project. Funded by the Research Councils UK Global Challenges Research Fund, STRiDE is a multi-national project covering Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, and South Africa. The project aims to build capacity to generate research that supports the development of policy responses to dementia, with related projects also under way in Hong Kong and New Zealand. She is the curator of LTCcovid.org, an initiative linked to International Long-Term Care Policy Network that shares evidence and resources to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 amongst those who use and provide long-term care. Her main research interests are economic aspects of care, treatment and support of people with dementia, and long-term care financing, both in the UK and globally. She has extensive experience in developing simulation models of the future resources required to address long-term care needs and needs arising from dementia. She has a background in Economics (BA and MSc, Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and is currently Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has been a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank’s ageing and long-term care programme and for the World Health Organisation’s Department of Ageing and Life Course, preparing a country self-assessment tool for long-term care. She was a co-author of the 2016 and 2019 editions of the World Alzheimer Report.
Publications:
- The development and validation of the discrimination and stigma scale ultra short for people living with dementia (DISCUS-Dementia)
- Pathways to care for people with dementia in India: an exploratory study using case vignettes
- Research evaluating the effectiveness of dementia interventions in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic mapping of 340 randomised controlled trials
- Dementia in South Africa: a situational analysis
Kontakt:
Dr. Johanna Fischer
SFB 1342: Globale Entwicklungsdynamiken von Sozialpolitik
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Tel.: +49 421 218-57074
E-Mail: johanna.fischer@uni-bremen.de
