The Influence of Mother Empowerment in Nutritional Classes on Infant Nutrition Status in Coastal Area

Nutritional deficit is a major threat to cause nutritional status that triggers stunting which can disrupt of physical and mental growth, intelligence, immunity, and reduce productivity, resulting in long-term economic losses for Indonesia. Nutritional counseling significantly increased the mother's nutritional knowledge and babies born in good nutritional status. This research uses quasi experimental design by empowerment intervention in nutrition class with counseling and demonstration of complementary food processing by utilizing local food. Data analysis was performed by multiple logistic regression analysis. The research objective is to determine the factors that influence the implementation of the empowerment of nutrition classes in the pattern of breastfeeding, complementary feeding and nutritional status of infants 6-12 months. The results of the study concluded that empowerment affects of breastfeeding, complementary feeding and the nutritional status of infants. Multivariate analysis shows that the complementary feeding’s pattern was infuenced by mother’s attitudes, and the nutritional status of infants are influenced by complementary feedings’pattern. The pattern of complementary feedings was 79 times affects infant’s nutritional status. This is cause by the improvement of the mother's attitude will increases their also care to improve the pattern of complementary feeding so that the nutritional status of infants aged 6-12 months will get better. This fact is expected to be able to prevent children from stunting but the food intake of children until they reach 2 years old still needs a lot of attention to finally overcome stunting.