Addressing iodine deficiency is essential to improving health, learning and economic potential at all stages of life. Iodine plays a particularly important role in fetal and infant development, because it helps the brains and bones of babies and young children develop properly. This can improve educational attainment and future earnings.

While a person only requires a teaspoon of iodine during their lifetime, it does not stay in the body for very long. That means small amounts are needed regularly. This is usually supplied by the food we eat, but when plants and animals are raised in areas with iodine-deficient soil, the diet of local populations can lack the recommended amount of iodine.

In 1993, the World Health Organization adopted universal salt iodization (USI) as the recommended method for providing people with an adequate dietary amount of iodine. Since then, it has been scaled up to become the primary method for controlling iodine deficiency disorders. Despite this, 20% of global households are still not consuming salt that has been adequately iodized, although these estimates vary widely across regions, socioeconomic statuses and education levels.

For more than three decades, Nutrition International has been working to expand the adoption and improve the quality of salt iodization around the world.

Working with local salt industries, we support appropriate iodization techniques and ensure industries have the tools, equipment and training they need to produce salt that is safe, high quality and adequately iodized. We also provide technical and logistical support to develop profitable business plans, and we encourage salt producers to form cooperatives to pool resources and improve production techniques, quality, packaging and marketing.

We support national governments in designing iodine deficiency control programs — including legislation, standards and monitoring — and we help them work successfully with salt producers. We also work to strengthen regulatory systems and improve quality assurance, and to ensure governments have the capacity to sustain salt iodization over the long term. Local governments are brought on board to help finance the cooperatives and monitor the iodization.

In collaboration with partners, donors, governments and the private sector, we do the following:

• Provide support to governments across Africa and Asia to design or implement national iodine deficiency control programs.
• Strengthen the enabling environment in key countries by:
  • fostering government leadership, ownership and commitment to sustainable, high-quality salt production and iodization programs;
  • supporting the development of policy, legislation and regulatory systems; and
  • improving the enforcement of regulations through external monitoring.
• Improve salt industry capacity in target countries by:
  • consolidating micro- and small-scale salt processors for more sustainable support;
  • providing technical assistance to enhance quality/safe salt production, effective iodization practices, and internal quality assurance and control to ensure adherence to quality standards; and
  • supporting market-driven logistics and supply systems for inputs like potassium iodate.
• Build the global evidence base in collaboration with other global development partners to keep salt iodization visible as an essential and unfinished global health agenda.

Our USI program aims to improve the consumption of adequately iodized, safe salt by the general population, particularly women. Adequate iodine status during pregnancy is essential to protecting maternal health and preventing irreversible developmental delays in children.

Women are crucial in salt iodization, because they take on roles as processors, advocates and monitors (depending on the context). In some countries, such as Senegal, women represent a large proportion of small-scale processors, with some assuming increasingly prominent leadership roles as monitoring agents in their communities to ensure the appropriate enforcement of standards.

We provide training and technical support to improve production quality, strengthen business practices and support women’s engagement in salt iodization. These efforts contribute not only to better quality iodized salt, but also to women’s economic empowerment.