Founded in 2000, Project Healthy Children (PHC) is a small nonprofit that assists government and industry in designing and implementing countrywide, market-based, mandatory food fortification programs.
During a humanitarian visit to Honduras in 2000, David and Stephanie Dodson saw firsthand how micronutrient health is the basic building block on which rests everything, from a child’s ability to resist HIV to a country’s ability to migrate from economic dependency to independence.
Upon their return to the States, the Dodsons founded Project Healthy Children (PHC) in response to the enormous gap they’d seen between health care systems in the United States and the developing world. But they were primarily interested in exploring preventative health care strategies that, rather than relying on ongoing financial assistance, could be sustained indefinitely without outside help.
Food fortification is one of least expensive but most reliable methods for improving micronutrient health. For approximately 25 cents (USD) per person per year, it is within a country’s power to prevent a child from becoming blind, a mother from hemorrhaging to death during childbirth, or a baby being born with a debilitating birth defect. All of this is accomplished not through charitable donations but through the day-to-day purchasing of basic commodities. All that was missing was an organization to help governments create and put into place these programs. That’s where PHC stepped in.
Twelve years later, building on successful work in Central America, Africa, and Asia, PHC has become a leader in the international community, working with governments and industries to design and implement micronutrient strategies in developing countries.
Consistently expanding its efforts, PHC works with proven science and social and economic models to roll out strategies that have passed the tests of efficacy and feasibility. Most important, our mission is not to become a permanent fixture in the countries in which we work.
Because we aid the government and industry in establishing programs that will continue to aid the community without our ongoing assistance, we celebrate the day we leave a country, not the day we arrive.
