Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) has announced that SP2 alumnus Dr. Shadrack Osei Frimpong, NPL’19, a global health leader and scholar whose work focuses on occupational neurology, will deliver the School’s 2026 Commencement speech on May 16.
Learn more from this message from SP2 Dean Sara “Sally” S. Bachman, PhD:
Dear Members of the SP2 Community,
I am thrilled to announce that the 2026 commencement address for the School of Social Policy & Practice will be delivered by Dr. Shadrack Osei Frimpong, a 2019 graduate of our Nonprofit Leadership (NPL) program.
Dr. Shadrack O. Frimpong is a global health leader and scholar whose work focuses on occupational neurology; the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of neurological disorders caused by environmental and work exposures such as pesticides and heat. Specifically, he focuses on the world’s 860 million farming families, including his parents and siblings. He pioneered occupational neurology for smallholder farmers and built the Cocoa360 Center, the world’s first campus for occupational neurology care.
Fueled by his background growing up on a farm in rural Ghana, Frimpong is a triple threat to the problems his efforts address: he’s lived through them (from birth), studied them and taken them on. He grew up without running water and electricity and, as a child, his legs were nearly amputated after contracting a river infection. Yet he became the first person from his village to attend college in the US, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the $150,000 President’s Engagement Prize (PEP), one of Penn’s highest honors. With the PEP, he built the Cocoa360 Center. Cocoa360’s campus comprises a clinic, a school and a farm that restores brain health for farmers and their schoolchildren.
For his efforts, Frimpong has received many awards, including the prestigious Samuel Huntington Public Service Award, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of top social entrepreneurs around the world, the Clinton Foundation’s CGIU Honor Roll and the Muhammad Ali Award, which recognizes six global activists who work toward social change under age 30. Queen Elizabeth II also awarded him the Queen’s Young Leader Award at Buckingham Palace.
Frimpong holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania and an Advanced Master of Public Health (MPH) in Global Health from Yale, graduating from both with top academic prizes. He also pursued a Ph.D. in Public Health and Primary Care from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Beyond his peer-reviewed publications, he has provided expertise on community engagement in public health and medicine, working with UNICEF and WHO to co-author evidence-based frameworks on global health issues.
In July 2023, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Royal Holloway, University of London and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Medicine degree (M.D.) from the Yale School of Medicine.
Frimpong is a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and a 2025-26 Obama Foundation Africa Leader.
The SP2 Graduation Ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 16, 2026, at The Palestra at 6:30 p.m. ET. There will be an SP2 Pre-Ceremony Reception 4-6 p.m. ET. Please see the Commencement Schedule for more details.
All the best,
Sally
Sara S. Bachman, Ph.D.
Dean
School of Social Policy & Practice
University of Pennsylvania
