Vitamin Angels: Providing nutritional support to underserved communities
24 Apr 2024 | Vitamin Angels
The US-based public health nonprofit Vitamin Angels aims to combat malnutrition by addressing maternal and child nutrition. Amy Stanfield, chief operations officer, highlights the organization’s mission and dietary supplementation programs, which reached 72 million women and children in the US and abroad in 2023 alone. These include the provision of prenatal vitamins and minerals, vitamin A and deworming treatments. Stanfield also discusses the challenges met by the NGO along the way and the team’s goals for the future.
Hi, everyone.
This is Milana for Nutrition Insight.
Today I'm joined by Amy Stanfeld, Chief Operations Officer at Vitamin Angels.
Amy, can you tell us a bit about Vitamin Angels and your mission?
Yeah, happy to do so.
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for having me, Milena, and I'm honored to be here to talk about what we do, on behalf of our staff.
So, yeah, I'm Amy.
I'm the chief operations officer here at Vitamin Angels, and my main role is to ensure that the wheels of the organization are moving and everybody has what they need to get what they need done.
And we're a public health, nonprofit, working to improve the nutritional, maternal health, and child, health around the world.
So, we work all over the globe and we also work in all 50 states here in the United States as.
Great.
And can you tell us a bit more about what exact regions of the world are you active in and what is the impact of your prenatal vitamins and minerals on the health and nutrition of the communities you work with?
Yeah, happy to do so.
So, we work in 65 different countries at the moment.
And like I said, we work in all 50 states in the United States.
So that's a real point of pride for us as.
And just to back up a little bit on what we do to familiarize the audience on, on the deliveries that we provide.
So we deliver those essential vitamins and minerals in different ways, and we always work with evidence-based nutrition interventions.
So we work really closely with the public health.
World in, in large.
We have partners all over the public health, world that help us, kind of examine and research those things.
But right now, we started with vitamin A, which, as you may or may not know, is essential to childhood immunity support as as averting any blindness problems as Children are growing up.
And so that started as our first initial intervention, and then we moved on to deworming.
And what's important about deworming for children underneath the age of 5, is that if they have helminths in their system, worms, those worms will then take the nutrition from the child, whether they're getting that from some food or the vitamin A supplementation that we're providing.
So, we Then provide deworming along with our vitamin A interventions.
And then we do the prenatal vitamins and minerals that you were just referring to.
That program actually has ramped up quite a bit in the last 5 years.
I've been here for 7 years and we've seen a massive amount of growth in our impact in that programming specifically and I'll go into that a little bit more.
And then we do complementary feeding in some of the areas of the world, including the US and the UK as an example, to deliver a little bit more nutrition to generally children that are out of preschool or other school facilities and help them kind of, support their nutrition that they may not be getting at home.
And so, to your question that you just asked, knowing our interventions, our impact is, is quite large.
So, As far as context, as far as malnutrition, and you may be talking about this in your other podcasts that you've done, but there's about 3 billion people in the world that are malnourished and experiencing some form of malnutrition, and that's exacerbated by multiple factors, as we know, conflict is a is one, famine, floods, natural disasters, all the things, and just generally, there's always a problem out there.
So, it's especially problematic, for pregnant women, and that's why those prenatal vitamins and minerals are so essentially important.
And a malnourished mother gives birth to a malnourished baby, and that causes sort of an intergenerational cycle of malnourishment.
And so, that baby grows up to not have the proper nutrition, the ability to have a better economic outcome as an example, and then passes that along to the next generation.
So, we are there with these interventions, including vitamin A and deworming, but the prenatal vitamins and minerals that we've been highly focused on.
Are a major driving force for us to interrupt that intergenerational cycle of malnourishment and make sure that women have healthy outcomes in their own health with their pregnancies, but also with the babies that they're giving birth to because it is an essential part of pregnancy and post-pregnancy as , I would add.
For lactation as.
And so, yeah, right now, we're serving as far as numbers go, we have those 3 billion people, but we're reaching about 72 million underserved pregnant women and children, with, and their babies with those essential vitamins and minerals around the world.
So, again, really proud of our partnerships that help us and enable us to do that.
So, yeah, that's, that's our impact as of right now.
And have you faced any challenges along the way?
Definitely, always challenges in any organization, but certainly in the nonprofit space, I'm sure you've, you've noticed this in your other talks that you've had.
It's always a fluid, dynamic environment that you have to adapt to, and, that's part of my job and I'm, I really love that aspect of it.
But I can tell you, Madison included, who is on this call, every one of our staff from around the world, and we work in many different countries, and we have staff all over the world, have always faced the challenges and come out better for it.
And we've grown, even in the past 7 years that I've been here, we've more than doubled.
We've put in new interventions, we've put in new ways of working like implementation science within the public health sphere.
That have truly changed how our organization works and how we , implement the things that we do.
And so, I'm really proud of that fact that those challenges have forced a change in our organization at every juncture.
And one I would just highlight is our US programming.
So, that piece is a huge, was a huge challenge, A, to, to get to people, in the US, but then also be able to reach those underserved populations, which there is about a million of them.
And then another one is our partnerships, which are really key to how we get things done.
So, you may be asking, and a lot of people ask us, like, how do you get to 72 million women and children?
And the answer is, there is no way for us as employees of vitamin angels to get to everybody, and it's also not efficient.
And in public health, we're always looking at what's efficient, what's effective, and what's going to get to the populations and make an impact.
In the way that is, Yeah, impactful for that, for that local group.
And so we work with partners around the world.
We work with 1200 different local organizations that includes local governments, other, NGOs, non-governmental organizations, and even some like larger organizations like UNICEF.
We have partners going on with them.
Work with World World Health Organization from how we formulate our prenatal vitamins and all of those different partnerships kind of weigh into how we get to these women and children and do it in the way that is most efficient, most effective, and, and is good for the local populations.
And those populations.
Already know their people, we're not gonna come in and know them better than they do.
And, and we know that from a public health perspective.
And by providing the interventions that we have, we're able to almost amplify the work that they already have in place and vice versa.
So, oftentimes, they already are providing health services, whether it's a midwifery clinic in Nigeria or a school that has young children boarding there.
You know, on and on and on.
It, it's it varies, and so our services are just layered on top of what they're already doing.
And can you give us some examples and share any success stories in particular?
Yeah, absolutely.
Tons of success stories come to mind again.
I feel like the prenatal program, has been , just stellar in growth.
And again, that would not be possible without the local partners that we have, as as our donors.
And that's also really important to highlight that they are true partners in this effort.
And I think, like I said, one of the challenges of serving women in the US is that finding the area that we can reach these women at.
And unfortunately, this may or may not be a surprise to your audience, but many people are shocked to learn that our mortality rate for, for women in the US is the highest in all developed countries.
And it's double the rate of peer countries, which is horrifying, and that's especially true.
In underserved populations, rural populations, immigrant populations, there's a lot of issues there that we need to tackle in the US and there's more than a million underserved pregnant women.
So, so, we're really hyper-focused on that.
And again, it's a challenge, but it's something that has given us, a lot of motivation and to help them find those adequate health services for that nutrition that's ever so important to their development in their pregnancy and also their babies.
So, we know that we can reach those women and, and we've, we're reaching about 50% of that unmet need right now, which is fantastic, and we're really proud of that, uptick and the ability to reach those women, especially in an environment where local clinics are often closing, large health systems are becoming conglomerates, and they're pulling out of rural areas where it's often really hard for women to have access to health.
And so, we are, every time there's a challenge and we run up against it, we find a new way to get through it, find another partner, to deliver these, interventions to these women that they absolutely need during their pregnancies and post-pregnancies to have healthy babies and healthy outcomes.
And like I said, we work in every US state, which has also been an, an accomplishment to find those partners in the US where we can serve these people.
Yeah, and I don't think that work is gonna stop.
In fact, we're hyper-focused on , more logistical, challenges right now and how we can overcome those barriers in order to get these services delivered to those women.
It's really great to hear these positive statistics and looking ahead, what are Vitamin Angel's goals and priorities.
It's funny when I hear that question, my mind immediately goes to a really long strategic plan, like, as the COO I think of All of the things that we need to get done.
But one thing I want to highlight here is that the staff and the global organization along with our partners works really hard to identify those areas that we can have the greatest impact.
So, not only our interventions, but how we move those forward and what the expected impact will be over the years.
And so, that's why we always agree on, you know, a strategic plan.
We're all focused on You know, those North Stars that we know we can accomplish and, and measure against.
And so, one of the biggest goals that we have, like overarching our whole plan is to double our impact, and that is a massive reach goal.
So, going to 140 million women and children in need by 2033.
Which is a, a big jump for us, but I absolutely know we can do it.
We've already taken a big chunk out of this before and ahead of time and ahead of schedule.
So, we have big goals, but it requires, partnerships.
It requires our collaborative partners from the industry.
It requires, our amazing staff and everybody around the world kind of working together, so.
Thank you so much.
