SELF HELP GROUP FOR OLDER PEOPLE WITH HYPERTENSION AT RUSUNAWA EAST JAKARTA REGION

Introduction: Hypertension in Indonesia is increasing from year to year, especially in elderly as a vulnerable group and is a disease number 3 that cause the death after stroke and tuberculosis. Therefore, there is need to empower the elderly to improve their potential so that they can solve the problem well. Self-help group is one of the intervention group through sharing the feelings, encountered problem and mutual support among them. This study aim is to gain an overview of the effect of the intervention on the ability of elderly’s self-help groups in dealing with hypertension. Methods: The research method used quasi-experiment with control group design. This research was conducted in two phases, namely Phase I: The current development of self-help group that constitute intervention strategies to provide information to elders about hypertension and how to cope, exercise skills in hypertension, and way of problem solving ; Phase II: pilot intervention of self-help group to conduct training for the elderly, and a self-help group meetings. Samples were elderly people who have hypertension. Sampling strategy used random sampling with the sample size were 44 for the intervention group in Rusun Pulo Gebang and 42 for the control group in Rusun Jatinegara Kaum and Pulo Gadung. Statistical test used dependent and independent t-test. Result: There was significant differences in elderly’s average ability in terms of knowledge about hypertension after self-help group in the intervention group compared with the control group (pvalue 0.001). Discussion: Self-help group’s intervention generated from this research can serve as the basis for policy makers and health care managers in order to implement various interventions related to empowerment of the elderly in the community and can be replicated in different order of health services both in the community and nursing home. Keywords: ability of the elderly, high blood pressure, self-help group