Dick Clarke is the 2023 Recipient of the Prestigious DAN Lifetime Achievement Award

Richard (Dick) Clarke, a prominent leader in the hyperbaric oxygen and diving community, received the prestigious and well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award from Divers Accident Network (DAN) in November of 2023. Dick has been making contributions to this community since enlisting in the British Navy as a very young man in 1959.  After a decade as a diver and British seaman, he moved to the civilian diving community, where he participated in numerous operational and research diving activities, including saturation dives in the subtropics and below-ice dives in the Arctic. He engaged in these exciting, physically, and intellectually challenging undertakings with enthusiasm and a voracious appetite for knowledge.  In a personal statement, Dick remembers fondly his support to such scientific and diving celebrities as George Bond (Papa Topside) and Werner Von Braun. While at UNEXSO (International Underwater Explorers Society), Dick also received 22 international underwater photography awards.

Dick transitioned to a major interest in clinical hyperbaric medicine in 1986 when he founded National Baromedical Services, where he continues as its president. He has been a successful businessman in this capacity for nearly 40 years and continues supporting several clinical facilities. Dick has always gone beyond a financial interest in diving and hyperbaric medicine. His accomplishments in education and research are not matched by many. Dick’s courses, for which he is well known, include regular offerings of the 40-hour introductory course. In the hyperbaric community at large, he is perhaps most highly regarded for his Advanced Hyperbaric Medicine Symposia.

Dick holds no advanced degree but is still a scientist of some regard. Through the HORTIS Project, he sponsored, initiated, and conducted a landmark study providing Level One evidence for the treatment of radiation proctitis. He is also the first author of its published results in the most prestigious journal in Radiation Oncology.  Through the Biomedical Research Foundation, which he founded, he is responsible for another landmark trial demonstrating that oxygen, the most potent radiation sensitizer, can be provided with hyperbaric oxygen to the tumor just before radiation with impressive increased tumor response. This approach avoids the operational barrier requiring that both be given simultaneously. Dick has been able to support this impressive research with grant awards exceeding $500,000. He has authored several additional peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has been a frequently invited speaker at national and international meetings and has been asked to review articles for several peer-reviewed journals on a number of occasions. I continue to be personally impressed by his deep understanding of the literature, evidenced in the articles he writes and those that he reviews.

Dick has always championed adequate initial and continuing training for technical and nursing staff. He holds the Number One CHT certificate and has served as President of the National Board of Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine since 2009. Dick is also known as an advocate for peer-reviewed and ethical practice in clinical hyperbaric medicine

Please join me in congratulating Dick. His contributions to Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine have been many and have had a great impact. You will all be pleased to hear that Dick, in his acceptance video for the Achievement Award, indicates that he plans to continue his efforts to contribute to education, science, and clinical hyperbaric oxygen.

John J. Feldmeier, D.O.