Bridget Gerk: ‘Making a Difference … an Incredible Feeling’
Bridget Gerk knows that every research participant experience holds the potential to change lives.
“The work we’re doing creates space for those interactions to be successful by providing high-quality standards of care while being compliant and ensuring participant information is appropriately stored, protected, and used throughout a trial,” she says.
Scientific breakthroughs are often years in the making and their translation toward aiding health occurs near the end of a journey that requires careful consideration at each stage in the process.
It's extremely important that regulatory and clinical teams work together to support the investigators. I’ve worked with some clinical trials that take only several weeks to activate, and then some that take months.”
“Our team works closely with sponsors, program assistants, financial coordinators, study teams, and several IRBs to finalize contracts and consent forms, prepare documents for signatures, and receive approvals externally and internally. All those things take time,” says Gerk, a regulatory. coordinator at the NUCATS Institute’s Center for Clinical Research. “It's extremely important that regulatory and clinical teams work together to support the investigators. I’ve worked with some clinical trials that take only several weeks to activate, and then some that take months.”
Gerk joined the Northwestern Medicine community in 2017 as a patient service representative in the Department of Ophthalmology. In January 2020, she was hired as a research study coordinator for the All of Us Research Program, and after one year was promoted to senior research study coordinator. At All of Us, her team specialized in recruitment and engagement for the program, and had several locations, including Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, where she was the lead coordinator.
“My passion for research started with All of Us,” she says. “Before I came to NUCATS, I used to think that my work had to involve seeing patients and be in-clinic in order to really help people. Once I learned about regulatory work, I started to realize how our work supports investigators, study teams, and clinical research in general. I no longer must be patient-facing in order to make a difference in their lives, which is an incredible feeling.”
The streets in Beverly are beautifully tree-lined and the houses are all built differently; no one house looks the same. It's a culturally diverse neighborhood and most of my mom's family resides either here or close to here, as well.”
Gerk graduated from Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School in 2010. In 2015, she graduated from Western Illinois University with a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics. Since then, she has taken project management courses and plans to earn a master’s degree at Northwestern in the future.
Gerk grew up in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, where she still lives today.
“I love my neighborhood because it gives you the feeling of being in a smaller town while still being in Chicago and only 12 miles from the Loop,” she says. “The streets in Beverly are beautifully tree-lined and the houses are all built differently; no one house looks the same. It's a culturally diverse neighborhood and most of my mom's family resides either here or close to here, as well.”
Gerk loves spending time with her nephews and vacationing — sometimes with family.
“A few years ago, me, my mom, and my godfather traveled to Ireland to meet some distant relatives. Members of my great grandfather's family gave us a tour of the house our ancestors grew up in. They even took us to the cemetery where I was able to visit my great-great grandparents' grave. The experience was just unreal.”
Written by Roger Anderson
