Ireland’s national Stroke Strategy emphasises the importance of enhancing the secondary prevention of stroke and ensuring national, equitable, patient-centred delivery of services. The INsPIRE Programme aims to provide evidence to inform policy on the effective promotion of physical activity (PA) in community settings to improve health outcomes for stroke in Ireland. In particular, the programme will update existing international evidence on the clinical and cost effectiveness of PA interventions in stroke, map existing secondary prevention stroke services and leverage an existing study evaluating a PA programme for people poststroke (the ExWell Stroke study). This will provide critical implementation data on feasibility, referral pathways, uptake, engagement, and programme retention. These data will be used alongside existing effectiveness and cost-effectiveness evidence from the evidence synthesis to inform health economic modelling exploring costs to develop a budget impact analysis. This evidence will be used to undertake a GRADE Evidence to-Decision Framework for developing policy recommendations based on the RE AIM and CFIR implementation frameworks. Public and Patient Involvement is interwoven throughout each element of the programme and will be coordinated specifically in a dedicated work package to maximise its impact. The work will be conducted across five work packages: WP1: Evidence synthesis on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of different approaches to community-based PA interventions following a stroke WP2: Mapping and implementation of PA for stroke in Ireland WP3: Cost and budget impact analysis of a stroke exercise programme in Ireland WP4: Policy recommendations WP5: Public and patient involvement and knowledge translation The INsPIRE team includes experienced multidisciplinary clinical, evidence synthesis, implementation science, health economics, and health policy researchers and key knowledge users and public and patient stakeholders. The proposed programme will significantly inform and influence policy for exercise-based secondary prevention of stroke in community settings in Ireland.
