Ageing, Function & Long term Care: Seeking Horizon Europe Partners

Greece presents a compelling and instructive case study for European demographic policy: one of the continent's most rapidly ageing populations, a long-term care system under sustained fiscal pressure, high rates of informal caregiving concentrated within families, and deep urban-rural disparities in rehabilitation and support service access. These are not peripheral challenges but lie at the heart of both calls, and our department is uniquely positioned to address them with scientific rigor and applied relevance.

The Department of Physiotherapy at the University of Thessaly brings expertise in rehabilitation outcomes research, functional capacity assessment, and community-based care models for older adults and persons with neurological conditions, including dementia-related functional decline. Our team has active engagement with international research infrastructures — including WHO-affiliated consortia spanning 31 countries — and a strong methodological foundation in health outcomes measurement, survey methodology, and mixed-methods research. We also draw on parallel expertise in EU health policy and health systems analysis, with direct experience teaching and researching the Greek National Health System (ESY) and its structural interfaces with social care.

For HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-TRANSFO-09: Rethinking long-term care policy in the face of EU demographic shifts, we are particularly interested in co-designing evidence-based frameworks that reposition rehabilitation professionals as central actors in sustainable long-term care systems — moving beyond the traditional medical model toward integrated, person-centred, community-anchored service architectures.

For HORIZON-CL2-2027-02-TRANSFO-09: Improving socio-economic outcomes for persons with dementia and informal caregivers, our focus lies in improving the functional independence and quality of life of persons with dementia through tailored physiotherapy-led interventions, while simultaneously mapping and mitigating the physical and psychological burden on informal caregivers — a dimension frequently underserved in policy design and largely invisible in socio-economic analyses.

As an academic department educating the next generation of rehabilitation professionals, we are uniquely placed to bridge research evidence, clinical practice, and policy translation. We are actively looking to partner with institutions in social sciences, health economics, digital health, dementia care, caregiver support services, and long-term care policy — and particularly welcome partners from Northern, Western, and Central Europe to strengthen geographic diversity and comparative research value within the consortium.