Vlahov was born and raised in Washington , D.C . He is the son of William Vlahov , a Queens-born dentist , and Helga Wolfsohn , a Jewish woman who grew up in Hamburg , Germany and fled the country for England on Kristallnacht . He received his B.A. from Earlham College in 1974 , his B.S.N. from the University of Maryland in 1977 , his M.S. from the University of Maryland in 1980 , and his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene in 1988 . Soon after graduating from the University of Maryland , he worked as a nurse in a coronary unit at Baltimore 's Sinai Hospital , and as a clinician in a prison hospital . He later became Director of the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine , where he helped build the center 's work on subjects such as HIV prevention and mental health . While working at the New York Academy of Medicine , he also conducted a study of psychological reactions to the September 11 attacks . Before joining UCSF in 2011 , he also served as a professor of clinical epidemiology at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health , and the senior vice president for research at the New York Academy of Medicine
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
David Vlahov