WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Susyani* and Muzakar

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Nutritional status is an important health indicator for children under age five who are vulnerable to nutritional and health problems. The first two years of life are a critical period, growth and development occur very rapidly during this period. The main factors in the occurrence of nutritional problems directly are inadequate consumption and infectious diseases, and other factors such as child care. The profile of South Sumatra Provincial Health Office in 2013 recorded children under five with undernutrition as much as 7.25%. This study aims to determine the effect of nutritional counselling on families on weight gain of undernourished children under five who received additional food with purple sweet potato formula biscuits. Methods: The design of this research is a randomized control trial (RCT). The intervention carried out was the provision of nutritional counselling guided by the pocketbook and supplementary food of purple sweet potato formula biscuits for 30 days in the treatment group, while the comparison group was given additional food of purple sweet potato formula biscuits and pocketbooks without counselling. To determine the differences in body weight changes in the treatment group and the control group, independent statistics t-test with a significance level of 5% is used. Results: The results showed that there were statistically significant differences in the average weight of respondents before and after the intervention in both groups. Conclusion: This study proves that the family guidance model with nutritional counselling using pocketbooks can increase the weight gain of undernutrition children.

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