The monitoring of the nutritional status in 2017 showed that the percentage of underweight in West Sumbawa was 20.8%-higher than national (17.8%). In 2016, Pencerah Nusantara, a program that strengthen primary health care through youth empowerment and interprofessional collaboration, encouraged the use of moringa as local food ingredient to improve the nutritional status of children at Poto Tano Health Center, West Sumbawa District. Moringa Program is an innovation program to educate community about nutrition and provide moringa-based foods to improve community nutrition. This program was then implemented not only at one health center but in all sub-districts. Furthermore, BAPPEDA (Local Development Planning Agency) included moringa program to Local Nutrition Action Plans as stipulated in the District Regulation No. 80/2017 about preservation of moringa. This study aims to describe the impact of local regulation on the development of moringa program as one of the solutions to overcome the nutritional problems of children under five. The study uses a case study design on community readiness assessment and is complemented by secondary data collection. The study shows clearly that the regulation is the key factor in strengthening cross-sector partnership and in maximizing efforts to improve community nutrition through the Moringa Program. During the implementation of providing moringa-based foods as a provision of supplementary feeding and complementary feeding at integrates health posts (Posyandu), there was a decrease in cases of underweight in children under five at the Poto Tano Health Center from 21.9% in 2017 to 19.9% in 2018.
Keywords: local food; moringa; nutrition; regulation.