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.

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.

Ethical approval has been obtained from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (reg. no. 2025-00083-01), the Rīgas Stradina Universitāte Research Ethical Committee (reg. no. Rīgas Stradina Universitāte Research Ethical Committee) and the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen (reg. no. 2025-07). Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, stakeholder engagement activities and patient/public channels.