Interview with Howard Schiffer
Photos courtesy of Vitamin Angels 

Vitamin angels founder and president Howard Schiffer discusses the impact of his organization, which provides essential nutrients to underserved mothers and children across the globe.

How did Vitamin Angels come about?
I was in the vitamin business when the 1994 Southern California earthquake hit. One of the local relief groups asked if I could help provide vitamins for displaced kids, so I contacted a friend who ran the largest mail-order company in the country. Three days later, the relief group excitedly called back because a truck had just unloaded three pallets of vitamins. I felt a desire to continue meeting this need, so I founded Vitamin Angels that same year.

Concerning children’s nutrition, you focus on vitamin A. Why?
First, vitamin A deficiency causes up to a half million children to go blind every year, and high-dose vitamin A interventions can prevent this. In addition, Dr. Alfred Sommer of Johns Hopkins discovered that when kids’ health is in bad shape, their immune systems can get so weak that a common cold, infection, or diarrhea could be life-threatening—and that high-dose vitamin A could save them. I’ve visited communities all over the world and witnessed this firsthand.

Is awareness of malnutrition lacking?
Malnutrition is often called “hidden hunger” for a reason. Many folks don’t realize that billions of people globally are malnourished and have vulnerable immune systems. It largely gets buried until kids are severely ill due to malnourishment and can’t recover.

Plus, even though the US food supply has been fortified for decades, we have the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country in the world—more than twice the average rate of our peer countries. So the problem exists here, especially in underserved communities; it just doesn’t get the visibility it deserves.

How else are women uniquely impacted by it?
There’s often a gender bias in other countries. For example, women are expected to eat last, so they get the least nutrition. Their babies are then born malnourished, and the cycle continues to spiral. If you can get essential nutrition to a mother early enough in her pregnancy, though, you can change the trajectory of both her life and her children’s lives.

We see this generational impact all the time through our work. We’ll set up distribution sites in places like Kenya or Uganda, and women will show up chewing on clumps of dirt—their only source of minerals. Within a week of taking Vitamin Angels’ prenatal vitamins and minerals, they’ll tell us that they no longer crave dirt. And when we go back six months or a year later, they’ll say that their pregnancies were easier and show us their big, healthier babies compared to their previous ones.

The Stories section on your website stands out. How important is shared experiences to your cause?
It’s essential. When I visit other countries, it’s clear that I’m from a different culture. I don’t speak the language, and I don’t look or dress the same—but the stories and experiences we share are completely relatable. When a mother tells me about losing her child because he got a cold and they couldn’t get to a clinic, that hits me hard as a dad.

And a mother’s dedication is amazing. We can start distributing at 7:00 a.m. in the most remote region of a country, and moms will walk for three or four hours, with one or two kids in tow, to get to our site because they know it’s going to make a difference to their children’s health. No matter what country, region, or village we are working in around the world, we see this same burning desire from all mothers to give their children the best chance at a healthy future.

How has Vitamin Angels expanded beyond vitamins?
We provide a comprehensive package of nutrition interventions: vitamin A and prenatal vitamins, of course, but also deworming, breastfeeding, and complementary feeding support.

All these efforts are part of an impactful long-term solution that changes lives in a big way. In 2023, we reached around seventy-one million underserved women and children in all fifty states and about sixty-five countries around the world, thanks to our dedicated team and 1,200 partners.

What are Vitamin Angels’ goals going forward?
I’ve asked women from Mississippi to Mozambique what they want for their children. The answer’s always the same: they want their kids to be healthy and have productive lives. Everyone deserves a chance at that.

So we’re here to give a voice to these families and tackle a problem that we have the wherewithal to solve. The goal of our latest campaign is to double our impact and reach 140 million women, infants, and children annually by 2033. We know it’s possible, we know what it takes, our team is committed, and we will get there. I have the best job in the world because I get to see the best in humanity—a lot of good people trying to make a difference.

For more info, visit vitaminangels.org