Effect of Nutritional Education on Improving Mother’s Knowledge and Nutritional Status of Malnourished Toddlers in Pekanbaru City Indonesia

The low nutritional knowledge of mothers creates greater risk for malnutrition of infants. The study aimed to examine a model design of nutritional education concerning mothers’ knowledge and the changes of nutritional status among malnourished children in Pekanbaru. The research design was quasy experiment, pre and posttest with control. The intervention group was 30 mothers who had underweight malnourished children who received nutrition education and modules, while the control group was 30 mothers, only getting modules. Nutrition education was provided 4 times through the provision of materials and modules and using interactive teaching aids. Nutritional status was based on weighing every month and observed for 3 months after the intervention. Data analyzed using the T Test. A significant differences was found in mothers’ nutrition knowledge about exclusive breastfeeding (p <0.001), menu settings (p <0.001) and parenting (p <0.001) between  the intervention and control groups. The intervention group had a higher increase in knowledge scores than the control group. After three months of nutrition education, there was an increase in the average Z score in the intervention group, from -2.39 to -1.96 while values in the control group increased from -2.26 to -2.02. Nutrition education can improve mother's nutritional knowledge, but it has not significantly improved nutritional status in under-fives