DID YOU KNOW? Kwaku Ohene-Frempong turned down an opportunity to compete for the Ghana National Team in the 1968 Summer Olympics to focus on his studies. He eventually represented his country in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

Ohene-Frempong had a successful athletic career before he even set foot on the campus of Yale University in 1967, winning three national track championships and becoming the Ghana national high school champion in long jump, triple jump and high hurdles.

Ohene-Frempong’s success continued with the Bulldogs and he served as team captain of the track and field team. There, he won a combined four indoor and outdoor championships. He was named Most Outstanding Athlete at the 1979 Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Championships after placing first in the 60-yard hurdles with a then-Heps record of 7.1 seconds. At the League's Outdoor Championships, Ohene-Frempong took home two titles in the 110-hurdles and he won the triple jump in 1970. He was also a three-time letterwinner in soccer and a William Mallory Award winner as the Best Student-Athlete at Yale.

But Ohene-Frempong’s dedication to athletics was nothing compared to his commitment to his education. During his sophomore season, Ohene-Frempong had Biology, Chemisty and Physics labs scheduled in the afternoon at the same time the team was practicing. He chose to focus on his school work and quit the team, but he was persuaded against that decision by his head coach, Bob Giegengack, and a teammate, Mark Young, who served as Yale’s head coach for 31 seasons and whose name is now used in the title for the Bulldogs' head track and field coach.
 
Ohene-Frempong wanted to be a doctor and he wanted to help his native country, and nothing - not even a chance to compete for Ghana in the Olympic Games - would come in the way of those goals. He was selected to the national team to compete in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, but declined to participate because the Games were set to take place in October and he would be forced to miss school. He eventually represented Ghana in the 110-meter hurdle competition in at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

After graduating from Yale with a BS in Biology in 1970, Ohene-Frempong went on to study at the Yale School of Medicine. During that time, he worked at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana. He graduated in 1975 and moved to New York City to do his residency in Pediatrics at the New York Hospital – Cornell Medical Center.

From there, Dr. Ohene-Frempong has become a leading pediatric sickle cell anemia specialist. After serving a three-year fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), he headed to Tulane University, where he established the Sickle Cell Center of Southern Louisiana in 1980 and served as its first Medical Director. He also became the Director of the Section of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Tulane School of Medicine.

In 1986, Dr. Ohene-Frempong returned to Philadelphia in 1986 to become the Director of the Sickle Cell Program at CHOP. Thanks to his efforts, the Division won a grant from the National Institutes of Health in 1988 to become one of the nation's ten Comprehensive Sickle Cell Centers. He was named the Center's Director in 1990.

However, Dr. Ohene-Frempong never gave up on his goal of aiding his native country. His focus on sickle cell disease began when he realized during medical school that one of his cousins had died from the disease. His dedication to eliminating sickle cell was hammered home when his first son, Kwame, was born with the illness. Dr. Ohene-Frempong founded the Sickle Cell Research and Treatment Center in Kumasi in 1992. His first clinic opened with 10 patients, but since then, thousands have been treated and hundreds of thousands of newborn babies have been screened for the disease.

Dr. Ohene-Frempong has been involved with many committees dedicated to finding a cure for sickle cell disease, including the national Board of Directors of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, of which he was elected as Chairman of the Board in September 2003. The NCAA recognized Dr. Ohene-Frempong’s efforts with the Silver Anniversary Award in 2000. In 1999, he was named an inaugural inductee into the International Scholar Athlete Hall of Fame together with Arthur Ashe, Senator Bill Bradley, Justice Byron White, Paul Robeson and others. And in November 2001, Yale honored Dr. Ohene-Frempong and eight other former athletes as inaugural recipients of the William H. W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award.

Currently, Dr. Ohene-Frempong is a full-time member of the faculty of the Penn School of Medicine where he is a Professor of Pediatrics. He is Board certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and is an Attending Hematologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Ohene-Frempong and his wife, Janet, have two children, Kwame and Afia.

Research conducted by the Yale Daily News was used in this article.