Just after 4:30 am PST on Jan. 17, 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake jolted southern California, leading to at least 57 deaths, an estimated 9,000 injuries, and billions of dollars in damage from collapsed buildings and vital infrastructure.
 
Following the Northridge Earthquake, Howard Schiffer, founder and president of Vitamin Angels, received a phone call from a local humanitarian aid organization inquiring about the availability of vitamin supplements for displaced communities with children.
 
He promptly made a phone call to a friend asking for help in shipping appropriate products directly to the aid group. A few days later, Schiffer received a second call from the aid worker who expressed overwhelming gratitude.
 
“What became clear was that nobody had a consistent, high-quality supply of vitamins,” he recalled, even well-established NGOs. “That was when the light went off,” he added.
 
With a successful career in the natural products industry, and as a midwife, Schiffer leveraged his connections with raw material suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to coordinate distribution of supplements to aid groups.
 
“That’s initially how Vitamin Angels started,” Schiffer said.
 
With severe losses from the Northridge Earthquake, the California Geological Survey received additional federal funding to accelerate the zoning of earthquake hazards in the region, allowing engineers and geologists to assess and address potential issues prior to future development. Scientists studying the quake and its aftermath also developed better early warning systems and preparedness protocols.
 
Similarly, a couple of phone calls to coordinate distribution of supplements to those in need at the time led to the development of an organization that has provided access to nutrition solutions for underserved communities all around the world.
 
Today, 30 years later, Vitamin Angels partners with local organizations and governments in 65 countries to reach the most underserved, nutritionally vulnerable populations — pregnant women, infants, and children — with evidence-based nutrition interventions

Humble Beginnings

Schiffer said he didn’t venture into the nonprofit world with much capital, or credentials, or celebrity endorsements to build a following. “I just had connections. I had the right people, and I had an idea that this could really help.”
 
Donating vitamins and building a partner list through relief groups helped establish the foundation for success.
 
“I got the vitamins for free. I got the shipping for free. And then all the costs were borne by the in-country organization, which pretty much is still the model we use today. So it was incredibly self-sustaining and easily scalable,” Schiffer said.
 
He recalled receiving the first cash donation of $5,000 from Chicago-based Fruitful Yield, which is owned by Now Foods. “It was like we won the lottery. It was like, OK, we can keep going for another 6 months.”
 
Ten years later the organization was still made up entirely of volunteers.
 
“We just kept at it,” said Schiffer. “We learned how to move products around the world. We learned to build a network, and we started getting more donors who really wanted to work with us. We also realized that the need was quickly getting greater than our capacity to fill it, because we were doing everything on a wing and a prayer.”

A New Value Proposition

When the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was passed in 1994, the true value of nutrient supplementation was beginning to become more clear.
 
In November of 1994, a World Bank publication titled “Enriching Lives: Overcoming Vitamin and Mineral Malnutrition in Developing Countries” stated: “The control of vitamin and mineral deficiencies is one of the most extraordinary development-related scientific advances of recent years. Probably no other technology available today offers as large an opportunity to improve lives and accelerate development at such low cost and in such a short time.”
 
The bottom line that micronutrient programs are among the most cost-effective of all health interventions, coming from a group of economists, solidified a message that Schiffer would help spread around the world through his work with aid groups. 
 
But before DSHEA, and before Vitamin Angels, the dietary supplement market industry was mostly a niche group of people dedicated to natural products.
 
“It was people who were living the lifestyle and really believed in natural foods and supplements. And they just gravitated to the industry,” said Schiffer. “There was a point at which I remember where we looked around a (trade) show and there were more venture capitalists and investors than there were retailers. It was like all of a sudden the industry had become the darling of the investment groups, and a lot of money started coming in.”
 
Businesses started expanding exponentially, he added, and retail chains “started coming into their own.”
 
“It became a very different model, and the products started becoming much more scientifically based.” Product development evolved to become more sophisticated and the root messaging behind the value of natural supplements and foods started to spread.
 
“And it happened to coincide with what I was learning with Vitamin Angels, which was that vitamins were a centerpiece of global health,” he added. “Vitamins are lifesaving, life-changing; and we were the proof point that vitamins worked.”
 
As the nonprofit grew, along with industry, more partnership opportunities developed, said Schiffer, who brought more people with business experience into the fold, helping explain the impact Vitamin Angels was making to a broader audience, giving organizations real data to show how they are helping save lives.
 
“It was quantifiable,” he added. “For vitamin A it was $0.25 for one child for one year. The prenatal multiple was $5 for the mother and the baby for pregnancy.” So when companies made a donation, the scale of their impact was clear.
 
Additionally, Schiffer noted the marketplace became more aware that “being a purpose-led organization was a business advantage, and using your purpose as far as recruitment and retention and employee morale was a really good tool.”
 
“People weren’t just selling products, they were also helping make the world a healthier place,” he added. “It was a powerful message, and it worked. More and more people joined us. We received support from a lot of the big players in the industry and they believed in what we were doing. They saw the results.”

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“The people on our team, our donors in the natural products industry, and our partners in the field are some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever met.”
— Howard Schiffer, Vitamin Angels

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Compounding Impact

At times, in the nonprofit field, Schiffer said, “there’s a lot of good intention that ends up going to waste. People dig a well, but they don’t leave any replacement parts. They don’t teach people in the village how to fix the well” if it breaks down.
 
While well-intentioned, some organizations don’t think enough about how to engage the community and ensure programs are self-sustaining.
 
“There are a lot of organizations that when you go to a country, they have a big office or trucks with their name. We’re largely invisible. What you see are the local partner organizations. They’re the ones that are visible. A lot of them have grown up in these communities. They know the language, they’re trusted, and so they’re the people that help us reach that end user.”
 
As Vitamin Angels has grown, it’s been able to work with more aid organizations to offer essential services. And as local governments see the value of the work, they’ve started to contribute as well, compounding the impact.
 
Today, Vitamin Angels has 1,200 indigenous partners in 65 countries and works in every state in the U.S.
 
The nonprofit has also been able to expand its intervention campaigns to offer greater health impact. What started with vitamin A has grown to include deworming, prenatal vitamins, breastfeeding advocacy, and MIYCN (maternal, infant, and young child nutrition).
 
“The more comprehensive a package that you could offer, the more impact that you’re going to have. And that’s ultimately what it comes down to: impact,” Schiffer said. Vitamin Angels has also advocated that local governments include prenatal vitamins in national health policies.

A World in Need

You don’t need to look long or far to see need in the world today. COVID-19 of course affected the most vulnerable populations the most. Throughout the pandemic though, dedicated public health workers continued to show up.
 
“There were people in Iowa who were doing curbside pickup. There were people in South Africa who were doing mobile clinics to do distributions. There were people in India working with state governments that had logistics in place to get to some of the women and children we wanted to reach,” said Schiffer.
 
Whether they served in the best hospitals in the world or some of the poorest countries on Earth, public health workers believe in the importance of their efforts and in helping women and children who are living in “pretty untenable circumstances.”
 
Anytime there’s a crisis — pandemic, war, civil strife, natural disaster — nutrition is one of the first essentials to be affected, he noted.
 
“During the pandemic the shelves got empty really fast,” said Schiffer. “And of course, the shelves in the low-resource communities weren’t well stocked to begin with. Problems rolled downhill. In Guatemala or Nicaragua, corn prices have doubled or tripled.”
 
Schiffer said Vitamin Angels communicated early and often that communities were suffering after COVID-19. “We put out the call and fortunately, because we’ve been doing this for a while, people heeded the call. Almost everybody stayed with us and just said, ‘OK, we’re in,’ and they kept supporting us. So we kept reaching out in every way we could.”
 
Alongside devastating hardship in Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere, violence and chaos has essentially cut Haiti off from the world as essential supplies dwindle.
 
Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince is a war zone, said Schiffer. “We work there quite a bit, but now it’s harder for us to ship product (through) Port-au-Prince because it’s not safe. But all of our partners are still there saying ‘we need vitamins for the women and children we’re working with,’ so we’re having to get more creative about how we get supplies to those communities.”
 
Nearly 5 million Haitians (almost half the population) are experiencing levels of acute food insecurity; 1.64 million people are classified as “class 4,” which is considered an emergency level of food insecurity.
 
“The current armed gang violence, high cost of food, low food production due to low precipitation, and limited humanitarian aid has only increased the devastating impact for millions across the country,” Schiffer noted. “The need for nutrition interventions in Haiti has never been greater than right now.”
 
Despite the challenges around the globe, Schiffer remains positive about the impact Vitamin Angels is making.
 
“I love doing the work. The people on our team, our donors in the natural products industry, and our partners in the field are some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever met.”
 
As a result, Vitamin Angels continues to grow. This year the nonprofit will reach 72 million women, infants, and children.
 
In the U.S., working in every state, Schiffer is confident Vitamin Angels will meet its goal of reaching half of the underserved pregnant population by the end of the year.
 
Currently, there are more than 1 million underserved pregnant women in the U.S. who do not have access to essential healthcare.
 
Vitamin Angels will continue to pursue its goal of reaching 140 million women and children annually by 2033 by further expanding programs worldwide and continuing to deepen its delivery and package of evidence-based nutrition solutions.
 
“The work that we’re doing right now is getting recognized at a level that I wouldn’t have thought possible 10 years ago,” said Schiffer. “We’re getting recognized by big agencies, by big foundations, and we’re doing implementation research with a leading academic institution. We’re publishing papers in peer reviewed journals.”
 
“Research that we’re doing with multiple-micronutrient supplements (MMS), is actually starting to be adopted by other agencies and by governments. That to me is exciting — to realize that you can make that big of an impact if you start to change policy around the world.”
 
It’s also incredibly gratifying to see up close the impact on women and their children, Schiffer said.
 
“Women will testify. They’ll come to the first distribution and ... their bodies are so starved for nutrition. We’ll get them on a multiple prenatal and we’ll come back and you can see the difference ... To me, that’s hopeful. It doesn’t take a lot to make a really big difference.”
 
Many of the healthcare workers that Vitamin Angels works with grew up in the areas they serve, he noted.
 
“Now they’re nurses and midwives and doctors and they’re back helping their people to have a better life. So I see a lot of progress. The headlines are suffering and pain, and that’s real. But there’s also so much progress that’s being made and so many people that are trying to make a difference.”
 
Schiffer noted that children are most vulnerable in the first 5 years of life.  “You’ve given them a start,” he said of Vitamin Angels’ work. “You haven’t solved every problem, but you’ve solved a big one.”

How to Get Involved

The dietary supplement industry has been the support base for Vitamin Angels, and with so much need in the world, they are looking for more help.
 
There are no shortcuts or quick solutions to the problems that Vitamin Angels is addressing. “We’re looking for long-term support. This is not an immediate fix,” said Schiffer.
 
The nonprofit customizes programs for each company it works with. “What works for one retailer is different from what works for another retailer,” said Schiffer. “Talk to us, tell us what your goals are, tell us what your challenges are, and we’ll work together to design a program that will help you create engagement with your customers, with your employees, with your suppliers, and to really start to change the culture within your organization.”
 
The relationship between Vitamin Angels and the people its partners serve “becomes part of who you are,” said Schiffer.
 
“This industry got started with the mom and pop supplement stores and nutrition as the basis of health. Sometimes people get a little bit focused on their own product or their own narrow window and stop realizing that we’re talking about public health initiatives that are making a global difference.”
 
These are interventions that have been proven to work, he added, “and if we can identify the barriers to access for getting women these supplements and start to create programs to address those barriers then we could have a tremendous impact, and that’s what we’re doing.”

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About the Author: Sean Moloughney has been the Editor of Nutraceuticals World since 2012. He can be reached at smoloughney@rodmanmedia.com.