Deja Cunningham ’22


WorldCare International, Boston, MA

This summer, I had the privilege to intern for Ed Wiggers ’90 at WorldCare International, a company that gives medical second opinions (MSO) to patients around the world with complex, life-threatening diseases. Their mission is to provide individuals with access to the best healthcare while ensuring that travel and cost are not impeding factors. The company has a consortium of top research hospitals in the United States whereby physicians of various sub-specialties look at a patient’s case and provide a second opinion based on the initial diagnosis/recommended treatment of the patient’s personal physician. WorldCare offers this service at no cost to patients eligible for the benefit with their insurer/union/company.

Interns at WorldCare.
(L to R): Alex Bettez ’23, Deja Cunningham ’22 (me), Mitch Pelletier ’22, and Jenny Yu ’23.5.

At WorldCare, I worked alongside another Eph as a Global Clinical Operations intern on two projects. For our first project, we met with the global medical directors to understand the medical second opinion process in each country/region so that WorldCare can ensure it is efficient and importantly patient-centered. The second project was developing a marketing campaign. To accomplish this, we read through various cases and summarized them into simple overviews that would ultimately help ensure that patients were informed about the service available to them.

This internship has been such a fulfilling experience; I have learned so much. I really appreciated the emphasis on collaboration, and I know now that this is something I want and need in a future career. Even though my internship was more focused on clinical operations, I also had the opportunity to learn about the business side of things. I was able to sit in a few of the business operations meetings where Ed discussed WorldCare’s overall business strategy. I was intrigued when learning about their approach for analyzing if there is a benefit to expand the service into a new region/country.

In addition to learning about WorldCare’s business operations, I had the privilege to speak with many colleagues because the company is so close-knit. I had the opportunity to work alongside nurse case managers, who are crucial to the clinical operations side of the company, as well as others like the Director of Strategic Initiatives, the CEO, the Chief Medical Officer, the head of their marketing, and the Director of Finance. I have been able to build connections and communicate with the team about their journey to the company.

This internship solidified my interest in public health and my desire to work in the healthcare field. I want to thank the members of the Class of 1966 for supporting my internship and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for providing me the opportunity to explore and gain hands-on experience in healthcare.