Epidemiologist Arnoud Paul Verhoeff  is head of the department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion of the Public Health Service Amsterdam, the Netherlands, since 1996. Before  that he was working for ten years as staff member of the department of Environmental Medicine at the same public health service. In 1994 he got his phd at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The topic of his research was the relation between home dampness, moulds and house dust mites and respiratory symptoms in children. After his phd he spend one year as visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, United States of America. Since 2006 he is also appointed as professor of Urban Health and Health Care at the department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.