*Limitations*

First, the present study employed a post hoc design, in which interviews in comparison regions served to provide insights into how the actual fall prevention practice in pilot regions might differ. However, this design does not allow drawing strong conclusions about the size and causality of the observed differences and similarities. Second, the small number of interviews and focus groups prevented the qualitative analyses form attaining a high level of saturation, in which the content and structure derived from earlier interviews and focus groups would have been confirmed and no new arguments were added by the later interviews and focus groups. The first and second limitations both may lead to results affected by information bias. Information bias arises if the data collected systematically deviate from the truth [43,44]. Such bias may be present in our data in particular for two reasons. First, respondents of the pilot study may have had an interest to report their work in a more positive light than they experienced because they may feel responsible for the implementation of the pilot project and interested in the continuation of the project. Second, participants in the focus group may have mutually influenced each other. The

first source of bias was addressed in our study by using a control group. The second source of bias was partially addressed by using individual interviews.

A third limitation of the project was that the fall prevention pilot project was implemented in regions that had already pre-existing interprofessional networks. Thus, the transferability to other regions might be limited such that the implementation of the pilot project in regions without such interprofessional networks might turn out to be more difficult. In general, it should be noted that all interviews were conducted in the Germanspeaking regions of Switzerland and the results are not easily transferable to the French and Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland. A final limitation of the project is that the data stems from 2017 and is thus not very recent. Nevertheless, we consider our study as an important contribution to the field of fall prevention in Switzerland for two reasons. First, falls constitute the deadliest cause of all non-occupational injuries in Switzerland [45]. There is thus a need to better understand how fall prevention may be best addressed. Second, to our knowledge, besides one other project [46], the pilot project studied here is one of the only fall prevention programs that has been evaluated recently. In contrast to the other project mentioned, our study includes a control group (i.e., health professionals in the control regions) which allows to better capture a potential causal effect of the fall prevention program. Our study therefore fills a gap in the knowledge on fall prevention in the Swiss context.

## **5. Conclusions**

With the increasing number of older adults in Switzerland as well as the continuously increasing life expectancy, the incident rates of falls are likely to increase. Given the oftensevere consequences of falls in terms of individuals' health, fall prevention is a central topic from a health care as well as a health economic perspective. Although there is evidence on a micro and meso level demonstrating that fall prevention measures can improve older adults' health, quality of life, and independence, there is the need to complement these advances by improving the interprofessional collaboration in fall prevention on the macro level in the sense of public health policy.

**Author Contributions:** F.W. was the principal investigator of the study including funding acquisition, project administration, and supervision. I.B., T.V. and P.R. were substantially involved in the conceptualization and study design. I.B., F.W. and A.G. collected the data and drafted the present paper. A.G. designed the qualitative study and carried out the qualitative content analysis of interviews. F.W. carried out the quantitative data analysis. T.V. and P.R. made substantial comments on the content of this manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The evaluation of the fall prevention program was funded by the foundation GESUND-HEITSFÖRDERUNG SCHWEIZ, gran<sup>t</sup> number 16.113, K40201.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Ethical review and approval were waived for this study as the data collected do not include health-related information about the participants.

**Informed Consent Statement:** The study participants were informed about the study and had the right to withdraw their participation at any time. They consented to participate by means of a signed form of informed consent.

**Data Availability Statement:** Requests to access the data can be addressed to ZHAW and Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz.

**Acknowledgments:** First of all, we are very grateful to all health care providers who took part in our interviews. Second, we would like to thank Tobias Imobersteg and Aro Deparente for their research assistance and Christoph Bauer, Andrea Koppitz, and Silke Neumann for their comments on the interview guideline. Third, we thank Lisa Guggenbühl, Doris Wiegand, and Günter Ackermann from "Gesundheitsförderung Schweiz" for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank Andy Biedermann und Flavia Bürgi from Public Health Services, who developed the fall prevention pilot project, for their collaboration.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare that they have no competing and conflict of interest.
