Written by: Matthew Orquia
At a Dec. 12 Loma Linda, California, City Council meeting, the city’s mayor, Phil Dupper, read a proclamation that noted the similarities between Loma Linda and Collegedale.
In the proclamation, Dupper emphasized the two cities’ connections to the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) denomination, their status as Adventist universities and a common history of education in medicine and health science. He also referred to many students from Loma Linda coming to Southern for undergrad and Southern students going to Loma Linda for medical school. According to a previous Accent article, 36 students from Loma Linda Academy (LLA) were part of Southern’s 2023 freshman class, which was 77% of the LLA students that were admitted to Southern.
“The cities of Collegedale and Loma Linda share similarities in faith, cultural matters, arts, sustainable development, humanitarian assistance and healthy-lifestyle living,” Dupper said at the City Council meeting. “ … I thought it would be nice to do something that they can hang in their city, and maybe we’ll get something that’ll come back here.”
On Feb. 5, 2024, at a Collegedale Commision meeting, commissioners responded with resolution #541, “recognizing similarities and affinity with the city of Loma Linda,” according to the meeting agenda.
“This is a reciprocating act on our part to the city of Loma Linda,” Collegedale Mayor Morty Lloyd said at the commission meeting.
Lloyd cited similarities in culture and values between the two cities. According to the United States Census Bureau website, Loma Linda’s estimated population is around 25,000, while Collegedale’s is about 11,000. Both cities have similar percentages of people with a high school or college education. Their median household incomes are also similar, although Loma Linda has a higher percentage of persons in poverty.
During the Winter 2023 semester, Tristan Deschamps – at the time a senior computer/information technology and management major in the School of Computing – conducted research exploring the health-related similarities between Collegedale and Loma Linda to determine whether Collegedale might be a blue zone similar to Loma Linda, one of five places identified as having the healthiest, longest-living populations in the world. The other four blue zones, discovered by Dan Buettner, a National Geographic fellow and award-winning journalist/producer, are: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, Greece.
Though Deschamps’ findings were inconclusive on the Blue Zone question, he found that both cities had lower rates of diabetes, adult obesity, high blood pressure and smoking than the national average.
“It is clear from the findings presented in this document that Loma Linda and Collegedale have similar health trends,” wrote Deschamps, who conducted the research using open data as a collaborative project between the School of Computing and the School of Journalism and Communication. “ … At the city level, there are several strong indicators in Loma Linda’s and Collegedale’s health data that suggest similarities in lifestyles. Because of the limitation of open data, further probing is necessary to draw strong conclusions.”
In an email to the Accent, Dupper stated that he and his family have visited Collegedale in the past because his son was considering attending Southern.
“That prompted us to research the town more than we ever had before,” Dupper stated. “I learned a lot and really like what I see happening there.”
At the Collegedale Commission meeting, Commissioner Katie Lamb mentioned that she met Dupper when he visited Collegedale and got to speak with him.
“I think this would be a good thing for us to be able to reciprocate,” Lamb said about the resolution.
Lloyd said he visited with Dupper in January, when he and his family came back to Collegedale.
Dupper stated, “I had a very productive and informative meeting with the mayor out there and have offered him and his council hospitality should they want to explore our beautiful community, as well.”
