Santa Barbara, CA – On October 23rd, Vitamin Angels, a highly-rated charity that provides nutritional support to children and mothers in need, brought together a group of public health experts at the 2016 Micronutrient Forum Global Conference (MN Forum) held in Cancun, Mexico to discuss the charity’s unique and noteworthy distribution model that provides micronutrient supplementation to nearly 50 million individuals annually.
Vitamin Angels technical team members, including senior leadership from Johns Hopkins, consultants, and partner organizations, including Un Kilo de Ayuda and Mexico’s Ministry of Health, led a sponsored symposium entitled: “Leveraging a proven approach to achieve large scale deployment of multi-micronutrient supplements to pregnant, nutritionally at risk, hard-to-reach women.” Approximately 100 guests representing government organizations, national and international non-government organizations, multi-lateral organizations, and academia participated in the session.
“Vitamin Angels is committed to expanding availability of multi-micronutrient supplements for pregnant women through non-governmental health systems that operate in collaboration with national health services to close the coverage gap,” said Vitamin Angels’ Senior Technical Advisor, Clayton A. Ajello, DRPH, MPH. “Deployment of this proven, low cost intervention can make significant inroads into improving birth outcomes, especially for those who are the hardest to reach and generally have limited or no access to national health services.”
The MN Forum, whose theme was “Positioning Women’s Nutrition at the Centre of Sustainable Development”, convened over 700 participants from 73 countries and 336 organizations around the world. Vitamin Angels’ presentation addressed one of the MN Forum’s four program tracks focused on scaling up micronutrient interventions in vulnerable populations and bridging the gaps between evidence and implementation. As, “the primary objective of the MN Forum is to foster dialogue among the research, policy, clinical, program and private sector communities to facilitate the translation of evidence for policy and program planning,” Vitamin Angels’ expertise in this area was particularly relevant to many attendees.
Furthering its dissemination of relevant insights/knowledge, Vitamin Angels also took part in the poster presentation at MN Forum, sharing a poster entitled: “Addressing a gap in prenatal and postnatal multiple micronutrient (MMN) supplement coverage for low-income pregnant and lactating women in the United States”.
To learn about Vitamin Angels’ distribution model visit: https://www.vitaminangels.org/our-approach. Organizations interested in applying for a micronutrient grant can learn more at https://www.vitaminangels.org/field-partners.
Vitamin Angels is committed to expanding availability of multi-micronutrient supplements for pregnant women through non-governmental health systems that operate in collaboration with national health services to close the coverage gap.”Clayton A. Ajello, DRPH, MPH