We are grateful to Tulsa Flyer for featuring UMA Center of Tulsa — and our Executive Director, Carolina Hernandez, MD, MSc, MBA — in a new story about what comes next for our community health hub in East Tulsa. The piece appears in Tulsa Flyer’s La Semana section, which carries bilingual coverage of the Latino families, neighborhoods, and civic life of northeastern Oklahoma.

The feature, “Carolina Hernandez Wants to Expand UMA Center,” takes readers inside the conversations happening every day at UMA: the families walking through our doors, the promotoras making first contact at health fairs and schools, and the long list of neighbors still waiting for care, for classes, for a seat at the table. It is a story about demand outpacing capacity — and about a community deciding what to build next.

Being covered by Tulsa Flyer means a great deal to us. Tulsa Flyer has spent years telling the stories of this city’s neighborhoods, non-profits, and everyday people — and its La Semana section has become a trusted space for bilingual reporting that reaches Latino families, immigrant entrepreneurs, and the communities east of downtown that too often get overlooked. When Tulsa Flyer chooses to tell a story en español y en inglés, the community listens, because the reporting shows up where our people already are.

In the piece, Dr. Hernandez outlines what expansion looks like in practice: more room for on-site services, deeper partnerships with healthcare and education providers, expanded behavioral health capacity, and stronger pathways between UMA’s programs and the economic opportunities East Tulsa residents are already building. Growth, at UMA, has never meant bigger for its own sake — it means closing the distance between what our neighbors need and what they can actually reach.

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Our community is not waiting to be saved. They are already working, already leading. Our job is to build the space that matches what they’re already doing.

Nuestra comunidad no está esperando a ser salvada. Ya están trabajando, ya están liderando.

We are deeply grateful to Tulsa Flyer’s editorial team for carrying this story, and to every reader who takes a moment to learn more about what UMA is building. If our expansion plans resonate with you — as a neighbor, a partner, a volunteer, or a donor — we would love to hear from you. The next chapter is being written with our community, not for it.