Summer Intern Perspectives: Leena Jamaleddin, AMCP Foundation/Pfizer Inc. Managed Care Summer Internship Program

The AMCP Foundation/Pfizer, Inc. Managed Care Internship at Prime Therapeutics has given me a valuable opportunity that expanded my experiences as a pharmacy student and provided me with critical skills for my future career. Through my community pharmacy experience, I noticed the impact of managed care on patients. I gradually began to see drug coverage patterns from health plan to health plan, which has since fostered my curiosity. During my internship, I learned about patient access and the critical role of a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) in the United States healthcare system. Prime Therapeutics is an excellent environment for students to learn and gain exposure to claims data, health economics & outcomes research (HEOR), and the drug approval process.  

During the internship, I attended weekly Pfizer, Inc. educational sessions that covered drug discovery & development, specialty pharmacy & biosimilars, budget impact models, social determinants of health, and real-world evidence. I also attended internal Prime Therapeutics meetings highlighting pipeline drugs, prior authorization, and utilization management. These experiences allowed me to gain knowledge in pertinent areas of managed care and the pharmaceutical industry. My internship included a capstone project, which utilized claims data of commercially insured members to analyze nine different disease states and the trends of disenrollment over five years. 

I am forever grateful to those who supported me over the summer. I want to thank Dr. Patrick Gleason, Dr. Benjamin Urick, Dr. Landon Marshall, and Dr. Catherine Starner at Prime Therapeutics for meeting with me regularly to discuss different managed care topics and for making my project possible. I also want to thank Dr. Vijaya Henry at Pfizer, Inc. for introducing me to the pharmaceutical industry field and for her continuous support of my project. Lastly, I would like to thank Ebony Clay and the AMCP Foundation for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and its ongoing legacy of supporting pharmacy students pursuing careers in non-traditional settings. 

 It was a pleasure presenting my capstone research project and representing Prime Therapeutics, Pfizer, Inc., and the AMCP Foundation at NEXUS 2022. 

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