The Effect Of Nutrition Counseling On Mother's Knowledge About Stunting During The Pandemic Period In Balige District

Abstract

During this covid-19 pandemic, mothers are more focused on preventing the virus, so knowledge about the nutritional needs of toddlers is neglected. Lack of knowledge of maternal nutrition is one of the causes of malnutrition in families, especially toddlers. With nutritional counseling given to mothers at this time, it is hoped that they will be able to improve the nutrition of children under five in the family. Method. This research is a quasi-experimental study with a one-group pre-test-posttest design, with purposive sampling as the sampling technique. The number of respondents is 27 people, with inclusion criteria. The measurement instrument used is a questionnaire, followed by counseling with powerpoint media, videos and leaflets. The analysis used paired sample t-test to describe the characteristics of the respondents. Results.The results showed that the average (mean) knowledge of mothers about nutrition at the time of the pretest was 71.42 and at the time of the posttest increased to 79.64. The lowest knowledge score at the pretest was 30 and the highest score was 90 and at the posttest the lowest knowledge score was 20 and the highest score was 100. Conclusion.The statistical test results obtained p value = 0.08 (p < 0.05) indicating that there is a difference, so it can be concluded that there is an effect of nutritional counseling on the level of knowledge of mothers who have stunting toddlers in Balige District. It is recommended to the local government, especially the village government, to provide facilities and infrastructure and to conduct regular counseling about the impact of stunting to the community to increase the consumption of balanced nutritious food, especially during a pandemic.