Groundbreaking ideas are inspiring a movement to ensure that every child, student, and family can thrive.
The power of words is transformative. What makes the 100% New Mexico initiative unique is that each county project is started with an Anna, Age Eight book club that gets all local stakeholders on the same page with the initiative’s vision, goals, activities, and urgent need for the initiative’s implementation of keystone project The 100% Family Hub: One-Stop Service Hub and community schools as one-stop service hubs for students and their families.
Meet the authors
The books Anna, Age Eight, 100% Community and Attack of the Three-Headed Hydras are written by Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello, the co-developers of the 100% New Mexico Initiative and co-directors of New Mexico State University’s Anna, Age Eight Institute. They are advocates for turning crises into opportunities for improving systems and solving challenges using data, technology, and collaboration. They teach leadership development and data-driven problem-solving and know why systems that should protect us can fail us. Dr. Courtney’s expertise in data analysis, continuous quality improvement, collective impact, and experimental psychology guides communities and organizations through turbulent and timely change. Cappello is a health systems strategist and New York Times bestseller author whose Ten Talks book series on family safety reached a national audience when his innovative work was featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Anna, Age Eight
Our Childhood trauma does not end in childhood.
Anna, Age Eight is required reading for all initiative participants, and is a powerful story to learn from, reflect on, and share with neighbors and co-workers. The short life of eight-year-old Anna was the catalyst for Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello writing the book Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment. Anna is a fictional character based on very real children within the child welfare system. While working in New Mexico’s Child Protective Services Research Assessment and Data Bureau, Dr. Ortega Courtney and Cappello heard of a child that had been in and out of the system eight times, only to be returned to her deeply troubled mother, who kicked her to death. There were expressions of moral outrage across the news media, both locally and nationally. Yet, the reforms suggested and implemented would not be sufficient to address the systemic challenges within child welfare. The co-authors committed to do whatever it took to keep a case like Anna’s from happening again.
The authors hoped that the book Anna, Age Eight, published in 2017, would catch the attention of local and state lawmakers to push data-driven reforms in the state capital, along with public engagement on the issue of preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma across the state. Over a year, the state of New Mexico would fund the development and launch of Anna, Age Eight Institute to implement the book’s recommendations to empower county leaders as they mobilize to ensure the ten vital services for surviving and thriving.
Contact your local 100% New Mexico initiative to inquire about book clubs and access to Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment by Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello.
Print and ebook versions of Anna, Age Eight are available through Amazon. The full (unformatted) text of the book is available for quick reference, search, and indexing.
100% Community
We face stark challenges we can overcome.
100% Community was the follow-up book to Anna, Age Eight, providing an overview of the 100% New Mexico initiative focused on ensuring ten vital services for 100% of families. New Mexico, along with the entire nation, faces stark challenges. Pandemics and economic disruptions make once comfortable lives vulnerable, while those already enduring adversity find life impossible. 100% Community is the reset button, providing the roadmap for how we work together in new ways to create local systems of health, safety, education, and economic stability. 100% Community guides local stakeholders in transforming the adverse social determinants of health into positive ones with step-by-step strategies for ensuring ten vital services for surviving and thriving.
100% Community promotes a groundbreaking model for public-private sector partnerships to achieve measurable and meaningful results. In 100% Community, all 100% New Mexico initiative participants and their partners are provided with the insights to ensure that ten vital services are working well in calm and chaotic times. The services described in the book include the “surviving services” that start with medical care and include behavioral health care, housing security programs, food security programs, and transportation to vital services.
100% Community shows how to increase access to the “services for thriving: that include parent support, early childhood learning, community schools, mentor programs, and job training. 100% Community provides a tested and groundbreaking strategy to create a seamless local health, safety, and training system, ensuring vital local systems that leave no one behind.
Print and ebook versions of 100% Community are available through Amazon. The full (unformatted) text of the book is available for quick reference, search, and indexing.
Attack of the Three-Headed Hydras
Confronting Apathy, Envy, and Fear on the road to saving humans and the future.
Attack of the Three-Headed Hydras is a whimsical and fully illustrated book by Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney and Dominic Cappello with Team 100%. It is a groundbreaking book unlike any other, published at a time when our nation faces its biggest crisis, or more accurately, colliding crises: trauma, adversity, joblessness, lack of health care, and social injustice.
Our mounting daily challenges are not uncontrollable acts of nature. They are manmade. Courtney and Cappello describe the culprits as the “Three-Headed Hydras of Apathy, Envy, and Fear.” These hydras are actual people in positions of real power, controlling and destroying our society. They have become as destructive as Godzilla marching through your neighborhood.
Part satire, part graphic novel, part manifesto, and all painfully true, Attack of the Three-Headed Hydras is the long overdue wake-up call to action. One inspiring read keeps you guessing, “Who wins in the battle between heroes and hydras?” Hydras is far more than a rant and expose. It’s a blueprint for rebuilding a stable and caring society that’s currently collapsing under the weight of incompetence, corruption, fear of change, and a complete lack of vision.
HERO OR HYDRA?
It’s evolution time, and the hydras’ extinction depends on you. How? Let the authors take you on one wild ride. You’ll laugh and cry, but mostly you’ll get really angry at the mess we are in, brought to you by the three-headed hydras of Apathy, Envy, and Fear. Yes, they are everywhere, but we can’t afford to lose this battle. We recommend that you join with champions, change agents, and heroes in your local 100% New Mexico initiative and join the fight of the century.
Print and ebook versions of Hydras are available through Amazon. The full (unformatted) text of the book is available for quick reference, search, and indexing.
Free Digital Downloads for New Mexicans
Anyone in the state of New Mexico can download a PDF copy of any of the books listed above for free. (Más información sobre el libro, Ana, de 8 años, está disponible aquí.) If you would also like to download a Spanish language PDF of the book, you will find a link to it on the download page. Just complete the form below.
After completing the form below, we will immediately provide you with a personal download link. If you have problems please contact us for assistance.