In its 25th anniversary year, Vitamin Angels made significant advances towards its goal of eliminating newborn mortality globally by scaling up its multiple micronutrient supplement (MMS) program. The organization increased its reach from 500,000 pregnant women in 2018 to reaching more than 2 million women in 2019. Domestically, Vitamin Angels partnered with over 330 local non-profits in all 50 U.S. states and reached over 200,000 underserved pregnant women with MMS. 
 
To further accelerate impact and create lasting change, Vitamin Angels also focused on creating demand for MMS, ensuring a global supply of MMS, and influencing policy change regarding MMS in low and middle-income countries.
 
“We have made astounding progress this year in advancing women’s access to prenatal multivitamins,” said Howard Schiffer, Vitamin Angels founder and president. “Besides growing our reach to 2 million pregnant women in the U.S. and around the world, we are also conducting implementation research that will further inform MMS scale up globally. Our goal still remains strong: to see a world where every woman has a right to a healthy pregnancy and a healthy, thriving baby!”
 
To create demand for MMS, Vitamin Angels participated in global advocacy events at well-recognized international meetings including Women Deliver and the Asian Congress of Nutrition to raise awareness about MMS, advocate for the uptake of MMS, and advance policies needed to support MMS implementation.
 
To ensure a global supply, the organization catalyzed efforts to develop an open-access MMS specification document that can be used to produce standardized, internationally accepted, quality MMS product. The product specification is currently under review by an independent panel of technical experts.
 
In July 2019, Vitamin Angels, the Haitian Ministry of Health, the Haitian Health Foundation, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health launched an implementation research project in Haiti to further examine how to increase coverage and compliance of MMS in Haiti. The research will generate operational knowledge and experience to inform MMS policy change and effective introduction and scaling of MMS within national programs on a global scale. The results from this research will be presented at the Micronutrient Forum Conference in Bangkok, Thailand in March 2020.
 
Vitamin Angels also engaged its corporate partners to join them in pledging $7.5 million to the “Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies” Goalkeepers 2019 Accelerator, a program that will further advocate to scale up the use of MMS around the world and improve global maternal health and birth outcomes by 2022.