Honzel Fellowship in Health Care Ethics
The Honzel Fellowship in Health Care Ethics is awarded to an outstanding (rising) senior in the, with a passion for ethics as it relates to health care. The Fellow serves as a peer mentor to students in the Health Care Ethics Internship and develops an ethics project with particular relevance to students and alumni.
Sylvana Domokos, 2026-27 Honzel Fellow
Sylvana Domokos’ close understanding of the healthcare system was shaped through growing up with multiple chronic illnesses, but her comprehension of the sheer scale of healthcare inequality did not come until later in life.
“Fighting for one of my family members’ right to basic medical procedures against insurance representatives opened my eyes to the true nature of healthcare in the United States, but working as an EMT in San Francisco radicalized me. Upon first glance, one may wonder why any given emergency room will be full of people with seemingly non-emergent health issues, until you realize that their health insurance makes it so difficult to accomplish non-emergent primary care visits that sometimes the only way to get basic care is to wait until something starts hurting. The lack of consistent primary care is disabling Americans from preventable illnesses every single day,” she says.
Through her work as an EMT, Sylvana witnessed firsthand how poverty leads to a lack of healthcare, which leads to disability, which in turn compounds how much poverty someone is experiencing. Sylvana believes that this preventable cycle is causing immeasurable damage to both our society and its economy. This understanding, combined with her experience during the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Healthcare Ethics Internship, has cemented her pursuit of a career in healthcare equity.
“The Healthcare Ethics Internship was absolutely transformative for me. I was researching endometriosis for my blog post, and I felt so driven regarding the future of this issue that I skipped school to fly to New York City in order to attend the Endometriosis Foundation international medical conference,” she says.
Although Sylvana had arrived at the conference with the intention to only absorb more information about the condition, she took the opportunity to speak with the leaders of the conference. Speaking with Dr. Tamer Seckin and other researchers directly about what else can be done regarding the inequities of endometriosis care made Sylvana realize the possible roles she could have after college.
She reflects, “Without this internship and my interactions with Professor Hayes-Mota, I would never have had the confidence to capitalize on an opportunity to engage directly with healthcare professionals at the forefront of their fields, and for that I am incredibly grateful.”
Sylvana’s dream of practicing medicine as a doctor no longer feels as far-fetched as it did before college, and she is determined to continue equipping herself with skills to better treat patients, regardless of their circumstances. Sylvana is incredibly honored to have been chosen as this year’s Honzel Fellow, and is excited to mentor the next class of interns.