Community Empowerment through Breastfeeding Support Group as an Effort to Improve Exclusive Breastfeeding in Batu City, East Java-Indonesia

One ofHealthy Indonesia 2015vision is thatto achieve the percentage coverage of exclusive breastfeedingto 80 %. Babies who are not given breast milk have a 17 times greater risk of experiencing diarrhea and 3-4 times more susceptible to ARI compared to breast-fed infants. Indonesia Demographic Health Survey showed that in 2007 there were 32 % of babies who were exclusively breastfed, while in 2012 the number rose to 42 %. But the number of formula milk-fed infants also increased. In East Java province, the highest coverage of exclusive breastfeeding is in Malang city with 99.93 %, and Batu city has the lowest percentage with 24.50 % (East Java Provincial Health Profile, 2010). Various attempts have been made to improve the coverage of exclusive breastfeeding but has yet to show the maximum results. One factor causes the problem is because there is no maximum empowerment of communities, so it is necessary to empower the community through breastfeeding support group as an effort to improve exclusivebreast-feeding. This study aims to determine the effect of community empowerment through breastfeeding support group toward the exclusive breastfeeding. This study was an experimental study with pretest-posttest one group design with Batu city residents as the population with a sample of 30 people taken with purposive sampling technique. The data were analyzed using parametric statistical tests correlated samples witht-test-Two tile test. The study showed that53.3 % to 80 % of breastfeeding empowerment is still in the low category. While the average results of the study in need assessment showed that there were 53.3 % to 73.3 % supportive predisposing factor, 53.3 % to 70 % very supportive reinforcing factor and 60 % to 73.3 % less supportive enabling factor toward the exclusive breastfeeding program. The result of t-test-Two tile testwas tcount (8.67) and t-table 2.060, indicated that community empowerment through breastfeeding support group had an effect on the number of exclusive breastfeeding. Breastfeeding support group is one of community empowerment efforts in mobilizing communities, especially nursing mothers, with ongoing mentoring from pregnancy to post-partum period. The breastfeeding support group should motivate breastfeeding mothers to exclusively breastfeed the babies. Therefore, it is expected that the policy makers and community figures must provide ongoing assistance for breastfeeding communities, so that exclusive breastfeeding coverage may spread wider.