"Aging populations, rising costs and sustainable delivery of high-quality care are increasingly common concerns in all EU countries. PACE aims to perform comparative effectiveness research concerning palliative care in long term care facilities (LTCFs) in Europe. While a growing number of older people will require palliative care in institutionalized settings, palliative care has only recently begun to be developed in LTCFs and effectiveness research hardly exists.PACE aims to compare, in six EU countries (BE, UK, IT, FI, PL, NL)(1) the effectiveness of health care systems with and without formal palliative care structures in LTCFs on patient and family outcomes –quality of dying, quality of life– quality of palliative care and cost-effectiveness, by performing a representative cross-sectional study in 48 LTCFs per country to include at least 1,152 deceased residents(2) the impact of the UK palliative care health service intervention Route to Success on patient outcomes, family and staff in LTCFs, by performing a controlled cluster trial across the six countries, randomly allocating 24 LTCFs to intervention and 24 to control.The PACE consortium brings together leading academic partners from multiple disciplines with EU organizations/networks actively tapping into the most important professional groups and policy-makers in the field, making it possible to influence research, practice, policy and public at national and international level in and beyond participating PACE countries. PACE will help to achieve the objectives of the European 2020 Strategy, specifically the European Innovation Partnership on Healthy and Active Aging. Based on its study results, PACE will develop tools to assist practitioners and policy and decision-makers to make evidence-based decisions regarding best palliative care practices in LTCFs. This will ultimately lead to optimizing the delivery of palliative care to the large proportion of EU citizens living and dying in old age."