Stronger Together

As Loma Linda University Health marches through its 119th year, carrying on its mission of service in education, clinical care, and research, we truly recognize that we are stronger together. While the campus continues to grow in many ways, now with 4,350 students, six hospitals, and more than 18,000 employees, our impact continues to ripple around the world.

In 2013 we launched our most ambitious philanthropy project ever, Vision 2020, seeking to raise $366 million for carefully selected projects on campus. We surpassed that goal with a total raised to date of $481 million, enabling us to build a new hospital and fund many other initiatives. We are indebted to each of you who supported Loma Linda University Health’s development through that campaign. 

Between Vision 2020 and our new campaign, we took time to strategize and develop critical plans to support our future needs. We announced our new philanthropy campaign on February 28, calling it Stronger Together — our community | our mission | our next steps. We have set a goal of $300 million over the next seven years and have already realized nearly one-third of that goal. Once again, we are focusing on the needs of this campus and the communities we serve, including enhanced research opportunities, expanded clinical services, and support of our students and faculty to continue our mission.

We are now approaching 35 years and 20,000 patients since our innovative James M. Slater, MD Proton Treatment & Research Center first began. This Stronger Together campaign will support our development of a variety of new personalized cancer therapies, treating cancer at the cellular level. We now recognize that many of cancer’s “treatment failures,” whether radiation or surgical, happened because current radiological diagnostics couldn’t detect micro-metastases that had already occurred. These new cellular-level treatment options could include such innovations as CAR-T cell therapy for leukemias and lymphomas, theranostics for metastatic prostate cancer, and Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) for cancers in the brain, such as glioblastomas.

Another part of the campaign focuses on an expansion of our other clinical services, both in Murrieta and on our main campus. Specialized pediatric care has become a huge part of Loma Linda University Health’s commitment, so we are facilitating that care with a new pediatric outpatient tower, largely funded by a state grant. We are renovating the Hinshaw Towers, our previous hospital, for major outpatient services in cardiology, cancer, and adolescent psychiatry. We are also expanding our School of Nursing capacity significantly and enhancing our School of Dentistry clinics. You will hear more about each of these initiatives as we roll out specific strategies.

Finally, let me focus specifically on the university, our educational arm, whose annual budget of $335 million makes up about 10% of our total LLUH enterprise budget. Nearly half of the university’s budget is provided by non-tuition income, with the balance of $176 million coming from tuition payments. This includes $21 million from federal, state, and institutional grants and scholarships directly to our students. The government provides another $1.1 million in Federal Work Study grants to those students who work on campus. While a few students can pay as they go, that leaves nearly $150 million that our students need to borrow, either from the government, private sources, or from Loma Linda University itself. Most of our students graduate with around $100,000 in loans for a master’s degree and over $300,000 for a doctoral program, including their living expenses.

The challenge of repaying these educational loans is recognized as a huge burden across the country. We are deeply thankful that our default rate for federal student loan repayments is around 1% each year, one of the lowest in the country. We believe this is due to our graduates’ ethical commitment as well as their ability to get well-paying jobs. But if we could lower their loan amounts, it would provide our graduates with greater flexibility to work in underserved areas in this country and internationally.

Finances continue to be a significant barrier to higher education, regardless of an applicant’s academic strength or financial need. I would love to increase the scholarships provided by the university from just over $10 million each year to twice that. Many students would prefer to come to Loma Linda University if they could afford it. Over the next seven years we will strive to make this dream a reality, but we can only do that together.

You will hear more about Stronger Together as we start reaching out to our friends and supporters to continue this legacy of service at Loma Linda University Health. Your gifts are what make our ability to impact the world so much greater. Caring for patients, training professionals, and discovering new ways to improve our health and wellbeing remain the focus and priority of our mission. Thank you for being a part of this legacy.

Sincerely,

Richard Hart, MD, DrPH
President
Loma Linda University Health