Once a year, when Gabrielle Rocque, M.D., an associate professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology, enters the Kirklin Clinic on the night of the annual ArtBLINK gala, she sees the space where she normally cares for breast-cancer patients reimagined as the site of a lively, black-tie celebration. “It blows me away,” she said. “It’s completely transformed.”
While ArtBLINK has been a successful fundraiser for the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB for decades, in 2024 it reached a new milestone: for the first time, the event raised more than $1 million. ArtBLINK has become one of the city’s most iconic events, bringing people together to toast the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and its more than half century of world-class cancer care, research, and innovation. Along with its unique hosting site—the workspace on a normal day for hundreds of physicians in nearly three dozen specialties—the gala stands out for many reasons. As guests enjoy dinner, cocktails, live music, and dancing, local artists are on hand to create one-of-a-kind works of art. Guests begin bidding on the pieces before they are completed.
The enthusiasm surrounding ArtBLINK is emblematic of what the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center means to the people of Alabama and beyond. “The O’Neal Care Center provides our community with access to the best, most cutting-edge care,” said Laura McDonald, president of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center Advisory Board, which raises money, promotes awareness, and provides support in other important ways. She said part of her own passion for the cause stems from a personal experience with the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, when her late mother, Karen York, was treated for ovarian cancer about 30 years ago. “I can’t imagine her having received better treatment anywhere else in Alabama,” she said. “I want the same for everybody across the state.”
This year also included a special tribute to Allene and Foots Parnell, who were recognized as the 2024 Director’s Circle honorees for their commitment to the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. Like McDonald, the Parnells also have a personal connection to cancer, having lost their 22-year-old daughter, Carleton, to the disease. “The Parnells are a great representation of the heart of the advisory board,” McDonald said. “They have spent a good part of their personal lives working to make a difference in cancer-related causes.”
Recognized as among the country’s leading cancer-research institutions, the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center was one of the first eight facilities in the nation to receive the Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). It remains the only such center in Alabama.
Barry Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D., director of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and holder of the Evalina B. Spencer Chair in Oncology, said money raised by ArtBLINK is earmarked for the center’s pilot grant program. In his four-year tenure, more than 60 pilot grants have been funded. “When we solicit funding proposals, we don’t indicate any particular type of work or type of cancer that we want to fund,” Sleckman said. “We simply say, ‘We want really great ideas that are relevant to cancer.’” These range from laboratory research to population research and what Sleckman identified as “translational trials—taking discoveries that are either made here or potentially elsewhere and planning for testing those discoveries in people with cancer.”
Rocque’s work represents the kind of forward-thinking research that benefits from the pilot grant program. In addition to caring for breast-cancer patients in the clinic once a week, she is deeply engaged in research that focuses on a broader picture of cancer care. “Much of the research I pursue is in communication, patient experience, and quality of life,” Rocque said. This includes shared decision-making, which focuses on including patients’ personal needs and values as part of the treatment-formation process; patient-reported outcomes, in which information directly reported by patients about their health status is integrated into their care; and addressing what she calls the “financial toxicity” of cancer and finding ways to mitigate the financial hardships that often come with a cancer diagnosis.
“We’re just scratching the surface of the power of bringing patient voice more purposefully into cancer care and delivery,” she said.
Rocque calls ArtBLINK her favorite event of the year. “It’s such a great opportunity to celebrate and be thankful,” she said, adding that while she’s never had the winning bid on an artwork produced at the event, she has commissioned pieces from the featured artists afterward. (One of these, a smaller-scale version of a painting from ArtBLINK, hangs in her office.) “There’s something valuable and important in my mind about having this event in a place where we care for people, and it’s a great way for the community and providers at UAB to intermix and get to know each other a little bit outside of the clinical setting. I don’t know of many other occasions where that happens in such a fun way.”
-Rosalind Fournier
To learn more about giving to support the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB, contact Senior Director of Development Lisa Roth at 205-934-0930 or leroth@uabmc.edu.