Santa Fe’s Amazing Opportunity to Shine
Attend the 100% Santa Fe Summit to explore how you can ensure 100% of families can access the vital services for surviving and thriving.
Katherine Ortega Courtney, PhD and Dominic Cappello
April 30, 2024
On May 8th, the 100% Santa Fe initiative will convene Santa Feans committed to the health, safety, and education of every child and student in the county. This is an important event in that it’s the first time community members can convene to see and discuss the challenges that families endure as they seek to access vital services for surviving and thriving, based on the 100% Santa Fe County Survey Report.
THE CHALLENGES
The 100% Santa Fe Summit will provide an opportunity to review the data in the report, which illustrates service barriers encountered by our youth, parents, and caregiving grandparents. A quick review of some of the report’s data illustrates the following challenges.
46% of those reporting needing the service reported difficulty accessing medical care.
52% of those reporting needing the service reported difficulty accessing mental health care.
31% of those reporting needing the service reported difficulty accessing food assistance services
68% of those reporting needing the service reported difficulty accessing affordable housing services.
50% of those reporting needing the service reported difficulty accessing public transportation services.
Inside the report, one can learn not only about the percentage of family members reporting difficulty accessing vital services for surviving and thriving but also about various service barriers that include cost, inability to qualify for help, unfriendly hours for working parents, lack of staff speaking one’s language, lack of transportation to services, long waiting times, and feeling unsure about accessing services.
SPOTLIGHT ON SOLUTIONS
The good news is that the 100% Santa Fe initiative has adopted a data-driven strategy that can greatly reduce service barriers. Based on the books Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment and 100% Community; Ensuring 10 Vital Services for Surviving and Thriving by Santa Fe residents and 100% New Mexico initiative co-developers, Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello, Santa Fe stakeholders can explore the seven steps to increase service access across every community in the county.
The work of the NMSU-sponsored initiative across New Mexico aligns with the work of the city, county, schools, and health and youth coalitions to pinpoint where barriers exist and address them through various evidence-informed strategies. 16 other 100% New Mexico county initiatives are already working on various local solutions, including developing the community-based and school-based 100% Family Center: One Stop Service Hubs. Please visit our research briefs and evaluation report to learn about our progress.
Attend the 100% Santa Fe Summit
The 100% Santa Fe Summit is an opportunity to create alignment across the entire county, ensuring that all the partners who ensure vital services for children, students, and families are part of the transformational capacity-building process. This includes stakeholders within community-based organizations, city, county, state, schools, higher education, and the business sector. Guided by data and facilitated by a countywide collaborative process, 100% of Santa Fe’s children, students, and families will be able to access the services for thriving.
Mission: The 100% New Mexico initiative is dedicated to ensuring that 100% of families can access ten vital services crucial for their overall health, resilience, and success. This university-sponsored endeavor necessitates the local implementation of evidence-based strategies encompassing both community and school-based service hubs, aiming to prevent the most pressing and costly public health and safety challenges, including adverse social determinants of health and adverse childhood experiences.
Did you know? Our transformational 100% New Mexico initiative is guided by web-based, self-paced courses provided free to all New Mexicans.
ENROLL TO GET STARTED
Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney
Katherine Ortega Courtney, PhD. is a changemaker, psychologist, author, and life coach. Her work in child welfare advocacy has instilled change in data-driven trauma prevention in states across the country. She has worked in policy and research and has led community initiatives through her work at the Santa Fe Community Foundation and the New Mexico Early Childhood Development Partnership. As a psychologist and life coach, she coaches individuals and organizations on interrupting the cycles of trauma, addressing the burnout rate in government jobs and child welfare, and providing the tools and skills to achieve the work-life balance that will trickle down to better outcomes in prevention. Her doctorate work at Texas Christian University was in experimental psychology focused on substance abuse treatment and prevention.
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Dominic Cappello
Cappello is a New York Times bestselling author and TEDx Conference curator with decades of experience advocating for health, safety and education. He has a Master of Arts in Liberal studies with an emphasis on Language and Communication from Regis University. He worked for the New Mexico Department of Health Epidemiology and Response Division and the New Mexico Child Protective Services Research, Assessment and Data Bureau, where he co-developed the Data Leader for Child Welfare program, which he implemented in New York City, Connecticut and New Mexico.
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The 100% New Mexico initiative is a program of the Anna, Age Eight Institute at New Mexico State University, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, Cooperative Extension Service. Contact: annaageeight@nmsu.edu or visit annaageeight.nmsu.edu to learn more.
