Johns Hopkins Lends Insight to Vitamin Angels

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—Vitamin Angels released results of a report it commissioned from nutrition experts at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to support its Operation 20/20 campaign. More than 5.5 million children in 17 countries are already being helped by Operation 20/20, which aims to reduce childhood blindness and deaths caused by vitamin A deficiency worldwide by the year 2020.

The Johns Hopkins report will serve as a roadmap for the Operation 20/20 campaign. One of the report’s key findings is the emergence of an important, new potential area of program involvement that could double the number of young child lives saved each year from vitamin A supplementation. The new program would involve vitamin A supplementation for newborns in conjunction with reaching postpartum mothers.

“Supplementing newborns could save 250,000 infant lives each year in Southern Asia alone,” said Howard Schiffer, founder, Vitamin Angels.

Based on the report’s conclusions, Vitamin Angels plans to collaborate in dietary supplementation programs that stress both conventional and innovative distribution mechanisms able to improve availability, access and use of vitamin A. These programs will focus their efforts in regions and countries with the greatest need, concentrate on underserved populations and advocate for newly proven approaches for micronutrient distribution. Vitamin Angels also plans to engage in efforts to connect vitamin A supplementation with newborns, to further reduce infant mortality, while contributing to the formation of policies required to bring this intervention to scale.