Reach, adoption, and implementation strategies of a telehealth falls prevention program: perspectives from francophone communities across Canada

Introduction A fall may impact a person’s physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Fall prevention programs are being implemented to reduce these negative outcomes. However, linguistic barriers in health services may reduce access to such prevention programs. A telehealth fall prevention program was designed to increase access to such programs in French for Francophone minority communities in Canada. This capacity building project aimed to support community partners to deliver this telehealth program and document strategies used to reach, adopt, and implement the program within various Francophone and Acadian Minority Communities. Methods A sequential explanatory mixed methodology was used to document reach, adoption and implementation strategies and describe lived experiences of program facilitators and organization representatives. Reach, adoption, and implementation were documented and analyzed descriptively while lived experiences were analyzed using content analysis following the Consortium Framework Implementation Research. Results Twelve organization representatives or program facilitators from eight organizations operating in four different provinces participated in the study. Three themes emerged from the qualitative data on reach and adoption: external context, internal context, and capacity building. Four themes were identified as barriers and facilitators to implementation: level of preparation and time management, interpersonal relations and telepresence, exercise facilitation and safety, and technological problem-solving. Conclusion Using tailored reach and adoption strategies such as prioritizing provinces with higher proportions of needs and training local community program facilitators may lead to successful implementation of a new telehealth fall prevention program. Results from this study could potentially inform other primary prevention programs or telehealth program implementation.