UNS — The Innovative Governance Research Group from the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIP) Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta provides digital health literacy counseling on stunting. This community service is carried out to improve people’s understanding of stunting. This activity targets the members of the Integrated Healthcare Center (Posyandu) in Sepat Village, Sragen Regency.
The issue of stunting remains one of the challenging problems in Indonesia. Stunting itself is a growth and development failure experienced by children due to long periods of malnutrition, recurrent infectious diseases, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. For this reason, the government has established a grand agenda in the health sector, namely stunting prevention. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed down the toddler stunting eradication program. This is due to misinformation or health-related hoax news circulated among the village’s parents, especially mothers.
The need for technological outreach in each community is crucial to avoid technology abuse and appropriation while suppressing the spread of hoax news. Therefore, digital health literacy counseling is one of the solutions to help the community, thus, they will not easily believe in hoaxes, especially those related to stunting information.
The Innovative Governance Research Group counseling aims to train the village’s mothers to filter information and fortify themselves related to the stunting phenomenon. “Hopefully, this counseling can overcome the confusion on the stunting-related information circulated on social media,” said Dr. Kristina Setyowati, M.Sc., representative of the Innovative Governance Research Group Service Team FISIP UNS, in a release received by uns.ac.id on Tuesday (31/5/2022).
The counseling activities were held on Saturday (16/5/2022), with approximately 45 mothers from the Posyandu in Sepat Village, Masaran District, Sragen Regency, attending the event. The counseling materials provision was delivered by two speakers, Suhartini as the Chairman of the PKK Sepat Village Council and Septyanto Galan Prakoso, S.I.P, M.SC., a Lecturer of the Study Program (Program) International Relations (HI) FISIP UNS.
The event was started with a welcome remark by Dr. Kristina Setyowati, M.Sc., followed by a welcome remark and introduction to the digital health literacy condition among mothers in Sepat Village and the importance of understanding the dangers of stunting by Suhartini. Before entering the material presentation session, the participants were given time to fill out a pre-test questionnaire prepared by the community service team to measure the extent of the participants’ understanding related to digital health literacy.
The following material was delivered by Septyanto Galan Prakoso, S.I.P. M.SC., who explained the importance of digital health literacy and provided mothers with an understanding on the dangers of stunting. He also explained stunting measurement applications available, such as the Stunting Prevention System (SYMPATHY 2.0), which usage was also demonstrated by Septyanto. The activity was concluded with a post-test questionnaire to measure the mothers’ understanding of the material that had been delivered by the speakers. Humas UNS
Reporter: Rangga PA
Editor: Dwi Hastuti