Imani Fonfield

Imani Fonfield is a Lowell House junior from Massachusetts concentrating in History and Science with a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy. At the College, Imani is a public service journalism fellow for the Phillips Brooks House Leaders in Public Service Journalism Fellowship, where she publishes a series of alumni leader profiles in the Harvard Gazette. Imani is also an inaugural student archivist in Lowell House’s Legacies Project, engaging with the history of the Lowell family at Harvard University and conducting archival research on Harvard’s 22nd President, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, for his active role in student discrimination in the twentieth century. Her love of archival investigation excitedly leads her onboarding training this year as a Radcliffe Institute Emerging Leaders Program mentor to high school students, where she is committed to local high school students’ leadership development and historical engagement with social movements.

Imani’s academic and professional passions are deeply rooted in the right to health. Over the Summer 2023 and for the past eight months, she assisted the research of a physician-historian analyzing empirical data on the current variation in patient income eligibility for charity care at tax-exempt, non-profit hospitals across the country in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. Beyond engaged scholarship on health access, she facilitates the health advocacy work of the Harvard Undergraduate Black Health Advocates (HUBHA) as the student organization’s Co-President on campus. With months of experience working within health organizations such as Partners In Health and DollarFor, Imani aspires to use the skills of her concentration to pursue a career at the intersection of health law, the history of medicine, engaged scholarship, and patient advocacy.