The use of booklet media in health counseling about stunting prevention in children

Maintenance of child health begins in the womb. Therefore, babies are fully fed by their parents until nine months of gestation. Healthy and nutritious food intake during pregnancy can create a generation of healthy and intelligent children. In addition, intake of nutrients can also prevent various kinds of disorders and growth and development disorders in children. One of the problems that often occurs in toddlers is failure or stunted growth in the child's height so that the child's height does not match his age, this condition is called a short toddler (dwarf) or stunting. World data shows that as many as 150.8 million children or 22.2% experience stunting. The incidence of stunting in Aceh Province ranks first and highest in Indonesia. The incidence of stunting in Aceh Besar in 2017 was 31.2%. This shows that the percentage of stunting incidents in Aceh Besar exceeds the tolerance set by WHO, namely a maximum of 20%. Basically, stunting can be prevented from pregnancy through providing additional food to parents during pregnancy, namely by providing iron, folic acid, iodine and protection from malaria. The community service activities aim to increase public knowledge about efforts to prevent stunting in children. This activity was carried out in Lam Batee Village, Simpang Tiga, Aceh Besar on August 11 2022, by providing health counseling to 36 parents who had babies and toddlers, where the activity began with a pre test and ended with a post test. After being given health education, the results obtained showed that parents' knowledge increased in the good category, namely as much as 58%. By increasing public knowledge about stunting prevention, it will provide awareness to the public. Thus, changes in behavior that are based on self-awareness and are not caused by coercion from others will be long-lastinG.