The Effect of MHealth to Increase Mother’s Skill in Children Growth and Development Monitoring During >36–48 and >48–60 Months

Abstract

Obstacles encountered the lack of implementation of early detection of growth and development of children during ˃36-48 and ˃48-60 months, especially in the development conducted every six months. Children at this age are rarely or never visit Integrated Healthcare Center anymore because the child has entered Early Childhood Education and mother perception that the child has been given compulsory immunization and no need to visit Integrated Healthcare Center. The problem of under five-year growth occurred in Indonesia (2013) is underweight 19.6%, stunting 37.2%, wasting 5.3%, and childhood developmental problems occurred based on the study is 30%. This study aims to assess the effect of the application of MHealth on improving the skills of mothers in monitoring the growth and development of children during ˃36-48 and ˃48-60 months. This study is aimed to analyze the effect of MHealth to increase mother's skill in children's growth development monitoring during ˃36-48 and ˃48-60 months with mothers and midwives for control design in each group by using simple random sampling for sampling technique for maternal and total sampling for midwives. The sample is determined based on age, education, occupation, income, and some children showing no significant difference between the control and treatment groups (p> 0.05). This study uses Quasi-Experimental research design, pre and post-test research design with control group design, which is to assess the effect of MHealth to improve maternal skills in monitoring the growth and development of children during ˃36-48 and ˃48-60 months. Data analysis is taken by Wilcoxon and Mann Whitney. The analysis showed that MHealth effects to increase mother's skill in children's growth development monitoring during ˃36-48 and ˃48-60 months (p<0.05).