Vitamin Angels

The Vitamin Angel Alliance is a global public health nonprofit focused on helping underserved populations in need - specifically pregnant women, new mothers, and children under five - gain access to lifesaving and life-changing nutrition solutions. Our program services are designed to strengthen, extend, and amplify the impact of our partners' health systems, including those of governments, ngos, academic institutions, and private sector organizations; and focus on evidence-based nutrition solutions for the first 2,000 days of life - from pregnancy through five years of age. Nutrition solutions currently include nutrition interventions (delivered, ideally as an integrated package of maternal, infant and young child nutrition services) comprising: i) essential micronutrient supplementation (Vitamin a for children under 5 years of age, and unimmap multiple micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women), ii) control of selected childhood infections that can compromise nutritional status (including the deployment of anti-parasitic agents, primarily albendazole), iii) behavioral interventions that optimize maternal, infant, and young child nutrition, and/or iv) supplementary feeding initiatives for young children from 3 to 5 years of age. The organization uses an implementation science approach to improve the impact of nutrition policies and nutrition services delivered. We do this by understanding problems related to implementation which creates an enabling environment for change, and then identify and test possible solutions in an adaptive and iterative manner. Through this process we foster knowledge exchange, collaboaration, and ownership among stakeholders. Specifically, this includes assessing the landscape into which change is being introduced, awareness raising and consensus-building activities among national/local decision-makers and stakeholders to identify initiatives/service delivery strategies to pursue, and additional activities with national/local stakeholders to identify, design and test strategies intended to optimize the delivery of nutrition solutions. As strategies for scaling are identified, the organization provides, consistent with accepted best practices, additional technical assistance in the form of learning solutions, monitoring and evaluation services, and supply chain solutions needed to support deployment of the nutrition solutions selected for scaling. The organization provides its support, globally, through nutrition grants that include products/services, technical advisory services and technical assistance - to qualified program partners (including to governments and non-governmental organizations - ngos) operating in the united states, canada, and the united kingdom; and selected low and middle income countries designated by the world health organization (the w.h.o.) As experiencing moderate to severe undernutrition or anemia or hidden hunger, and/or experiencing a moderate to severe prevalence levels of intestinal parasites.