Penyuluhan Model Pendampingan dan Perubahan Status Gizi Anak Usia 6 – 24 Bulan

Abstract

The outreach counseling model and nutritional status change in 6–24 months old children Background: Insufficient knowledge on food and health of mothers will lead to inadequate food intake and high infection risk, especially diarrhea and acute respiratory tract infection (ARTI). Improvement of knowledge can be achieved by counseling. There are several model of counseling, one of them is the outreach model. This study aimed was to analyze the influence of outreach counseling model toward the change of nutritional status of 6–24 months old children. Methods: Research design was a quasi experiment with non randomized pre post test control group. Intervention group recieved outreach counseling model by outreach nutritionists (Tenaga Gizi Pendamping) and control group recieved conventional counseling from nutritionists of primary health care center (Tenaga Gizi Puskesmas). The study was done in Makassar City, South Sulawesi Province with the working area of Sudiang Raya’s Primary Health Care chosen as intervention area and Bira’s Primary Health Care as control site. Subjects were children aged 6–24 months with WAZ between -3 until 0 SD. The number of subjects in intervention group were 32 and control were 37 children. The observation variables were changes of mother’s knowledge, energy adequacy level, protein adequacy level, diarrhea and ARTI duration and nutritional status (WAZ, HAZ and WHZ) of the children. Data were analyzed using t-test and multivariate analysis by linear regression. Results: After 3 months of intervention, there were increase in mother’s knowledge, energy adequacy level, and the decrease of duration diarrhea was higher in the outreach counseling group than the control group. The WAZ and HAZ in outreach counseling group were better than control group, and there was an increase in WHZ in outreach counseling group with a decrease in the control group. Conclusions: Outreach counseling model is more effective than conventional counseling in lowering the decrease of nutritional status on 6–24 months old children