Inside Oklahoma City's new Health Empowerment Zone initiative

Oklahoma Complete Health and the Urban League have launched a $300,000 Health Empowerment Zone in northeast Oklahoma City to improve maternal health, youth outcomes, and access to care in underserved communities.

Saturday, May 17th 2025, 10:39 am

By: Graham Dowers


-

A new initiative is taking aim at improving health outcomes in underserved communities, starting with northeast Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Complete Health and the Urban League of Greater Oklahoma City have joined forces to launch a Health Empowerment Zone, which is an effort to address serious health disparities such as maternal health, youth well-being, behavioral care access, and social drivers of health like transportation and food insecurity.

With $300,000 committed over three years, the partnership aims to bring direct services, education, and community collaboration to neighborhoods with some of the lowest life expectancy rates in the state.

To learn more about what this new zone means for local residents and how it could become a model for the rest of Oklahoma, we spoke with Clay Franklin, CEO of Oklahoma Complete Health and Dr. Valerie Thompson, CEO and President of the Urban League of Greater Oklahoma City.

Q: What is a Health Empowerment Zone?

Franklin: "So, while at Oklahoma Complete Health, we have initiatives to improve health outcomes across the state. We've identified specific communities that have the lowest health outcomes. And what we do is we invest in those communities with established organizations like the Urban League to help improve health outcomes in these communities. And those communities are called health empowerment zones."

Q: Are these new Health Zones going to help with health crises?

Franklin: "Well, when you look at the statistics and with the communities, it is. There's a variation between health outcomes. So what we do is we target on what the health outcomes are. It could be maternal-child health outcomes. It could be behavioral health, but also addressing social drivers of health, transportation, food insecurities, and even access to providers. And that's where the partnership with Urban League will help us do that."

Q: Can you tell us about that partnership?

Dr. Thompson: "We're really excited. We're really excited that Oklahoma Complete Health has reached out to Urban Lake. It's going to be a great partnership. They have committed $300,000 over three years to really make a significant impact in Northeast Oklahoma City. So we're just excited for the partnership."

Q: Where are these Health Empowerment Zones?

Dr. Thompson: "Northeast Oklahoma City, that is our health empowerment zone that we're targeting. And we're looking at infant mortality, maternal health, and youth outcomes. So we really wanna focus on looking at how we can improve health in Northeast Oklahoma City.

Q: How can people living there get help?

Dr. Thompson: "Well, we are looking for people to collaborate with us. We're going to be having listening sessions. We want to know exactly why people aren't having the health outcomes that we really need to pull up in Oklahoma City. So that's the reason why we're going to ask people to join us and collaborate with us to get these things done."

Q: Are there plans to expand?

Franklin: "Absolutely. So we do have initiatives statewide, but we'll take some of the best practices that we're going to do right here with Dr. Thompson, and then we'll spread it out to other parts of the Metroplex. Absolutely."
Dr. Thompson: "We really want to make a big impact because if we can change the outcomes in northeast Oklahoma City, we know we can change the outcomes for the state."


Graham Dowers

Graham joined the News 9 team in February of 2025. He is dedicated to sharing the diverse stories that have shaped his country and his community.

logo

Get The Daily Update!

Be among the first to get breaking news, weather, and general news updates from News 9 delivered right to your inbox!

More Like This

May 17th, 2025

June 27th, 2025

June 27th, 2025

June 27th, 2025

Top Headlines

June 27th, 2025

June 27th, 2025

June 27th, 2025

June 27th, 2025