NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Yale Athletics mourns the passing of Dr. Kwaku Ohene-Frempong '70 MED '75, a world-renowned expert in pediatric hematology who starred for the soccer and track and field teams. From 1964 to 1972, Dr. Ohene-Frempong was a member of the Ghana national track team and in 1972 he was a member of Ghana's Olympic track team. He passed away earlier this month.
At Yale Dr. Ohene-Frempong lettered in track for four years and in soccer for three. He captained the indoor track team in 1969-1970 and the outdoor track team in the spring of 1970, earning his second straight Ivy League 110m hurdles championship that season. In 1969 and 1970 he was the IC4A indoor champion in the 60y high hurdles and in 1970 he set a Heptagonal 60y high hurdle record of 7.1 seconds that stood for more than three decades. He earned the meet's Most Outstanding Performer Award in the process. In his senior year on the soccer team, he earned the team's Walter Leeman Trophy for outstanding initiative and leadership.
Upon graduating with a BS in biology in 1970 Dr. Ohene-Frempong received the William Neely Mallory Award, given to the outstanding senior male student-athlete at Yale.
Dr. Ohene-Frempong attended the Yale School of Medicine, followed by residency at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and a fellowship in pediatric hematology-oncology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He served as a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, a pediatric hematologist and director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a chief medical officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America. A leading authority on sickle cell diseases, Dr. Ohene-Frempong was chair of the Sickle Cell Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health and president of the American Sickle Cell Association.
In 1999, Dr. Ohene-Frempong 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. He was an NCAA Silver Anniversary Award recipient in 2000 and received Yale's George H.W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award in 2001.
