Around six years ago, Stephen Glick was a businessman, a manager of supply chains in manufacturing. Today, he is a regulatory affairs specialist at IU Health Goshen Center for Cancer Care. His personal journey from one professional world to the next is the story of compassion forging sustained professional commitment that contributes to progress in oncological care.

[Photo: Stephen Glick (right) and HCRN’s Senior Clinical Regulatory Manager, Lucienne Augustin.]

“There came a time when I felt the need to do something completely different,” Glick recalls. “I felt like I really wanted to do something in healthcare instead of the business world. Healthcare had some new meaning for me.”

Glick found that “new meaning” through his own intimate encounters with clinical oncology. “I was influenced by the fact that my wife is a breast cancer survivor.” He remembers “going to the infusion room and talking to the other cancer patients that were there and seeing the real-life struggles.”

Glick caught a vision that inspired his commitment to contribute to oncological care. He began volunteering in the infusion room at IU Health Goshen, in part to learn more about cancer research and was later offered his current position in the Research Department.

“Like some other functions in the Cancer Center, the work I do is behind the scenes,” he says. “Clinical trial participants and their families likely have no knowledge it is being done. But I have seen the front lines personally, with my wife’s successful cancer treatment and my time working as a volunteer in the infusion room. So it is not hard for me to keep sight of the fact that clinical trial participants are real people, going through a very difficult time.”

This past December, Glick was honored as a recipient of the Sandra Turner Excellence in Clinical Research Award. The Award was established in 2002 by Dr. William B. Fisher through the George and Sarah Jane Fisher Fund to honor the memory of Sandra Turner, the first executive director of Hoosier Cancer Research Network. Each year the organization selects individuals for the award who exemplify the qualities Sandra possessed and respected in others, such as sustained professional commitment, contribution to the progress of oncology care, and the unflinching touch of compassion.

In his characteristic desire to develop professionally in a way that impacts oncological progress, Glick has some ideas for how he will use the $3,000 award. “I would like to attend SOCRA (Society of Clinical Research Associates) educational conferences. This award will allow me to move forward with those opportunities and I am very grateful! I look forward to furthering my education.”

Looking back on his contributions to oncological care, Glick considers that HCRN has been a constant in that professional journey. “Ever since I’ve been here, there’s always been at least one open HCRN trial, he says. “It makes me happy when I’m going to work on one of those trials because I know exactly what to expect, I know who the people are, and there’s continuity there. It’s more like working with family.”

About Hoosier Cancer Research Network:

Hoosier Cancer Research Network (formerly known as Hoosier Oncology Group) conducts innovative cancer research in collaboration with academic and community physicians and scientists across the United States. The organization provides comprehensive clinical trial management and support, from conception through publication. Created in 1984 as a program of the Walther Cancer Institute, Hoosier Cancer Research Network became an independent nonprofit clinical research organization in 2007. Since its founding, Hoosier Cancer Research Network has initiated more than 150 trials in a variety of cancer types and supportive care, resulting in more than 300 publications. More than 4,600 subjects have participated in Hoosier Cancer Research Network clinical trials.