New horizons in improving research capacity in English care homes for older adults

As the care home sector expands over time, the health and social care needs of both residents and staff intensify and diversify. These sector-wide changes call for significant growth in research capacity to deliver useful, pertinent and timely evidence. In this paper we highlight growing pressures in the care home sector, and the major and enduring barriers to conducting research across that sector, within homes and amongst staff, drawing primarily on our experiences conducting public health research in England. These obstacles include a lack of national infrastructure, tradition and culture, and underdeveloped systems to reimburse providers for the staff and other costs associated with research delivery. Finally, we detail short, medium and long-term actions that could enable the growth of research capacity across the sector. These include leveraging political will, remunerating and crediting research champions, and establishing a feedback loop to showcase the contribution of research in improving both quality of care and resident outcomes. Our suggested actions focus on what would be required to build research capacity in care homes in England; although these also have relevance in other countries where there is a need and wish to build research capacity in adult long-term care facilities.