Elizabeth Khaykin Cahoon is a Georgian-born American epidemiologist researching cancer and precancer risks conferred by environmental sources of radiation exposure.

Her program focuses on studies of preventable risk factors that modify the relationship between ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and the risk of skin cancer and other cancers (in the general population in the United States and in people with especially high risk such as organ-transplant recipients, and studies that address unanswered questions about people exposed to ionizing radiation including residents and clean-up workers exposed after the Chernobyl accident (1986) and Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings (1945) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Cahoon also evaluates the UV radiation dose-response relationship for skin cancer risk by wavelength, age at exposure, and anatomic site.

In addition, Cahoon evaluates the role of UV radiation in viral activation, immune modulation, and other mediators of skin (and other) cancer risk.

Her previous work identified a relationship between ambient UV radiation and risk of Kaposi sarcoma, possibly through reactivation of the causative virus, human herpesvirus 8.

[3] Cahoon examines radiation-related risk of various cancer types in the lifespan study of Japanese atomic bomb survivors and is also leading a thyroid cancer case-control study nested in a cohort of Chernobyl liquidators (i.e., emergency clean-up workers) who were exposed to a large range of external radiation.