Dick Clarke, CHT-ADMINHe spent the decade of the 1960s in the British Royal Navy before relocating to Grand Bahama Island and the International Underwater Explorers Society. He subsequently joined the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s undersea research program, living in and working from seabed habitats in the sub-tropics and below Canadian ice. He served as faculty for NOAAs diving medical officer training course for 25 years and was employed by Oceaneering International from 1976 to 1985 as a senior saturation diving superintendent. During this period, he was a member of the team that introduced the diver medic training program.
From 1985 to 2022 Dick centered his hyperbaric and diving medicine operational support, education and research activities at Richland Memorial Hospital/University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Over 8,000 health care professionals trained within his program. He formed the non-profit Baromedical Research Foundation. Initially a basic science and pre-clinical laboratory, it eventually transitioned into the centerpiece for a clinical trials consortium. One key achievement was the first randomized, controlled, and double-blind trial to demonstrate hyperbaric oxygenation efficacy for deficient wound healing.
Dick was instrumental in the development of the certification in hyperbaric technology (CHT) program. He has written numerous peer-reviewed medical and technical articles, authored chapters in undersea medicine and hyperbaric oxygen therapy textbooks and served as a reviewer for the U.S. Navy Diving Manual and the journals Anesthesiology, Undersea Biomedical Research, Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine, Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine, the British Medical Journal and Lancet Oncology.