Vitamin Angel Alliance, Inc.

VA provides the above-mentioned interventions to pregnant women and children under five to reduce preventable illness, blindness, and death, and ultimately, to create a healthier world.

We seek to fulfill our mission by closing the “coverage gap" between those who have access to essential nutrition services and those unable to access essential nutrition services.

During VA's current Strategic Plan period (2020-2022) VA aims to:

• Reach and positively impact the health and economic well-being of incrementally more beneficiaries-globally and in target countries-with an expanded range of evidence-based interventions.

•Strengthen overall learning solutions to and through field partners, to support delivery of Vitamin Angels interventions consistent with best practices.

•Strengthen program monitoring and evaluation capacity as asset: I) For improving program decision-making, II) For validating that Vitamin Angels’ overall mission is achieved and III) to support decision-making by donors.

•Grow capability for implemented research to help share Vitamin Angels’ technical assistance and advisory services including capacity to: I) Design/execute implementation research, II) Deliver technical assistance and advisory services, and III) Generate funding to support implementation research.

•Develop/implement capacity to effectively communicate a more accurate representation of who we are, what we do, and our accomplishments to our stakeholders.

To fulfill our mission, VA's programming approach for reaching hard-to-reach beneficiaries is to catalyze locally sustainable micronutrient supply and distribution systems among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that complement existing governmental initiatives to deploy essential nutrition services.


Key features of VA's programming strategy include:

• INTEGRATED, COMPREHENSIVE SERVICES. VA assists field partners to integrate products into existing or expanded health and nutrition services. VA's approach builds on the understanding that there is no one solution to alleviate undernutrition. However, undernutrition is more likely to be alleviated when all proven approaches are combined.

• DEFINED GROUPS AT RISK AND IN NEED. VA provides interventions to preschool-aged children 6-59 months of age and pregnant women. VA focuses on populations who are at-risk for micronutrient deficiency, difficult to reach, and generally not currently served by governmental health care systems.

• APPLICATION OF PROVEN INTERVENTIONS. VA promotes only evidence-based interventions that support good health and nutrition during (but not limited to) the first 1,000 days of life from conception through 2 years of age. The interventions include:
- Vitamin A supplementation to save lives and reduce mortality among undernourished children ages 6-59 months,
- Co-administration of albendazole with vitamin A supplementation, as appropriate, to reduce the burden of worms and improve vitamin A status and general micronutrient status,
- Multivitamin supplementation for pregnant women to support fetal growth and reduce risk of low birth weight and small for gestational age, thereby improving overall birth outcomes
- Health education messaging on promotion and use of optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices;

• PROVISION OF APPROPRIATE TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE. VA designs and delivers technical assistance that is appropriate to its field partners to facilitate their success.

• MARKETING TO TECHNICAL GROUPS AND FIELD PARTNERS. VA's program division engages in activities that raise awareness among its field partners and counterpart technical agencies to the causes of undernutrition and VA's role in its alleviation, and encourages prospective partners and technical agencies to engage in program collaboration.

• APPLICATION OF TARGETED, UNIVERSAL DISTRIBUTION. VA helps field partners to deliver micronutrient and albendazole products consistent with the principles of “universal distribution" as defined by WHO, but targeted to high need populations.

• PREFERENCE FOR ENGAGING WITH LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS. VA works to the greatest extent possible with local, established, organizations throughout the world that commit to absorb all costs of distribution but lack access to micronutrient and albendazole products and technical assistance.

What We Do: VA has a programmatic capacity to alleviate micronutrient deficiency or “hidden hunger" by assisting primarily NGOs seeking to initiate nutrition services or add to their existing health/nutrition services. Starting with the premise that there are five categories of proven nutrition interventions: direct feeding, commercial fortification, supplementation, combatting childhood infections, and promotion of optimal infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices (i.e., optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices), we assist our field partners in the above areas where we have expertise.

How We Deliver Results: VA recognizes that many organizations expend considerable effort and resources annually to alleviate hidden hunger, and attempts to identify and qualify such organizations with whom to partner. Once applicants are qualified to become a field partner, VA has the capacity to provide each with appropriate micronutrients and pharmaceuticals (manufactured to internationally accepted technical specifications), and other non-product supplies, free of charge. VA also has robust capacity to provide technical assistance, with emphasis on training, needed to ensure that services are consistent with accepted best practices adapted to local conditions.

Technical Focus Areas: VA has capacity to focus on maternal and child supplementation programs, programs to combat childhood infections, efforts to promote optimal IYCF practices. More recently, VA has begun to explore support for direct feeding programs for preschool-aged children. Our efforts are characterized by targeting at-risk beneficiaries who may be without access to national health services, encouraging local organizations to take responsibility for alleviating hidden hunger, building capacity among networks of local NGOs, and support for initiatives that are complementary to and coordinated with existing national health services.

Our Core Competencies: VA's capacity to implement programs extends to initiatives constructed around key core competencies:

• DELIVER SERVICES (undertaken through field partners) focused on supplementation, combatting childhood infections and optimizing IYCF practices.
• PROVIDE TECHNICAL EXPERTISE and resources to partner organizations that seek to take local responsibility to alleviate hidden hunger.
• ADVOCATE FOR POLICY CHANGE and raise awareness to a comprehensive range of proven maternal and child nutrition interventions.

Additionally, VA has:
• A 4-star Charity Navigator Rating
• A history of clean annual audits with no material deficiencies
• Selected board members/staff with faculty appointments at the Johns Hopkins University
• Working relationships with WHO, UNICEF, Nutrition International, Children Without Worms, and other international NGOs
• A growing platform of over 2,000 field partners,
• A proven “country program advisor" model that energizes field partner operations and delivers beneficiary growth.

From 2014-2020:
• VA increased beneficiaries reached with evidenced-based nutrition interventions from 36,475,739 beneficiaries in 2014, to 70,893,539 beneficiaries in 2019, residing in approximately 70 countries. In 2020, despite constraints due to COVID, Vitamin Angels successfully reached 60,303,188 children and pregnant women with evidence-based nutrition interventions, in 56 countries through a network of 2,147 program partners;

• VA implements a continuous learning approach for the program partners and service providers we support. This approach is complemented with a “toolbox” of educational and training tools that program partners can use according to various contexts, needs, and technological accessibility. This allows VA to deliver technical assistance capacity – conformant with international best practices – to its program partners to support nutrition services within their existing health services. Available Learning Tools include an award-winning eLearning platform to train program partners. In 2020, VA expanded use of digital strategies to reach more learners through a mobile application;

• VA engages in active coordination to coordinate the implementation of nutrition interventions with national governments in nine administrative priority countries;

• VA Conducts annual on-site monitoring of 20% of program partners, using a stratified random sampling methodology;

• In efforts to measure its impact, VA designs and conducts coverage surveys of its evidence-based interventions to confirm its programs are filling gaps in coverage, reaching vulnerable populations, and complementing the work of the government to improve coverage. In 2019, VA conducted a coverage survey in India to determine Vitamins Angels’ contribution to filling gaps in overall coverage of vitamin A and deworming interventions in the state. While VA was not able complete any coverage surveys in 2020, it focused on revising its M&E framework and prepping for surveys in 2021.;

• VA applies an implementation science-based approach to facilitate the sustainable introduction and scaling of evidence-based nutrition interventions. Implementation science allows us to solve problems that often impede interventions from having a public health impact under real world conditions. In 2020, VA continued to engage in implementation research to examine how antenatal MMS can be effectively implemented and scaled within the country’s national health system context. More information about these efforts can be found in the MMS Special Report published by Sight and Life in 2020;

• VA plays a critical role in the scale-up of multiple micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women globally by working closely with key stakeholders. In 2020, Vitamin Angels organized and co-hosted global meetings to raise awareness around the evidence supporting MMS, the 2020 update to the WHO’s Antenatal Care Guidelines, and to the use of an implementation science approach to effective implementation.