Enhancing medicinal plant literacy for disease management through the MOTOGA application among community members of Sedayu 2 Health Centre, Bantul, Indonesia

¹ Study Program of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
² Study Program of Management Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy and Sciences, Universitas Muhammadiyah Prof. DR. HAMKA, Jakarta, Indonesia
³ School of Medicine and Dentistry, Public Health, Griffith University, Australia

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract

Public literacy regarding medicinal plants remains low despite their increasing use across various societal groups. Digital technology offers opportunities as a convenient and efficient educational medium to support the improvement of herbal-based health knowledge. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of MOTOGA in increasing public knowledge about medicinal plants. The study employed a pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design with 42 respondents from the Sedayu 2 community health center area. The intervention was conducted utilizing MOTOGA for a period of two weeks. The level of knowledge was measured using a validated, standardized questionnaire, with subsequent analysis employing the Shapiro-Wilk normality test, followed by a paired t-test or the Wilcoxon test. The results at the implementation stage demonstrated a significant increase of 20% to 30% in knowledge scores. A significant increase was also found in gastrointestinal knowledge, with an average score rising from 8.81 ± 2.5 to 13.02 ± 1.76, p < 0.001. This finding supports the implementation of digital literacy programs to enhance community knowledge of herbal medicine.