Over the past few years about 40 Austrian care homes have attained a certification according to the Austrian National Quality Certificate. During this process, the assessment of results has reportedly been one of the major challenges for care home managers and for external auditors. These experiences offered an important basis for identifying and assessing the utilisation of performance indicators by care homes.

Demographic ageing has resulted in increasing need for long-term care services. In order to ensure the sustainability and efficacy of long-term care systems, it is paramount to have a well-qualified, motivated and healthy workforce. To this end it is important to have a good picture of the present working conditions of the long-term care workforce in order to anticipate future needs in this area.

Following an increased interest at the EU level in the prevention of chronic diseases, the current project aims to carry out a comprehensive review of scientific evidence and policies related to nutrition and physical activity with particular focus on overweight and obesity. A series of expert workshops will be held to discuss and validate the reviews and to formulate conclusions that may be relevant for policy-making. Based on the review and the expert workshops a robust set of evidence-based policy options will be defined.

A number of countries regularly publish data on the consumption of pharmaceuticals. Recently, the Main Association of the Austrian Social Security Institutions has provided administrative data on pharmaceutical consumption in Austria which have been analysed and presented in a draft report. The European Centre will coordinate an external evaluation of these analyses.

Taking the universal health coverage (UHC) pledge that is part of the Sustainable Development Goals as a starting point, this project aims to develop a conceptual note that reflects on how UHC can be extended to long-term care and the policy implications deriving from it. This will be carried out in close collaboration with WHO Europe.