IO, Surabaya – Vina Himmatus Sholikhah, Fatmah Septa Dewi and Halfie Zaqiyah Gusti Puspitasari, students of Universitas Airlangga (Unair), Surabaya, East Java, marked a national achievement at the 8th Public Health Competition organized by Student Activity Unit (UKM) Lentera Faculty of Public Health (FKM) University of Jember. Vina as the team leader revealed that they managed to win second place in the scientific writing category (KTI).
For this competition they created an application called KREBS (“Kebutuhan Harian Energi Tubuh Sehatku” – “My Healthy Body Daily Energy Needs”) as an app based on Self Health Assistance through Great Diet Care, the objective being to reduce the incidence of obesity in Indonesia. “So the theme of the competition we participated in was the optimization of role and innovation of young generation in the global challenge in realizing a Golden Indonesia by 2045, choosing a health sub-theme so the KREBS app was created,” said Vina.
The reason for making the app, continued Vina, was based on the obesity problem in Indonesia. It is shown from data of Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) which states that the prevalence rate of obesity in Indonesia in 2013 was 14.3% and continued to increase to 21.8% in 2018.
Furthermore, Vina said that the application has a feature that provides a person’s daily energy needs. Furthermore, application users will also receive recommendations regarding a list of foods that can be consumed according to the user’s daily needs.
Vina revealed that the team was grateful for the victory they achieved. Before participating in the competition, they embarked on heavy preparation, from brainstorming ideas, compiling scientific papers, making application designs and prototypes for the presentation. “Due to pandemic conditions, all of our preparations were done online,” she explained as quote by unair.ac.id on Wednesday, (21/10/2020).
Asked about tips for writing scientific papers, Vina suggested reading references and being sensitive to the surrounding phenomena so many ideas would come up. Finally, Vina hopes that in the future she can take part in other competitions both at national and international levels so she can gain good reputation for her alma mater.
“Hopefully in the future, we will not only participate at national level competitions, but also international ones,” she concluded. (est)