Kahana is the Pierce T. and Elizabeth D Robson Professor of Humanities, Chair of the Department of Sociology, and the Director of the Elderly Care Research Center at Case Western Reserve University.
[1] She has published over 200 academic articles on Holocaust survivors, aging, and stressors.
[2] Kahana is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and is the recipient of its Polisher and Distinguished Mentorship awards.
She has also received the Mary E. Switzer Distinguished Fellow of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, the 1977 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Aging and Life Course of the American Sociological Association and Menorah Park's Heller Award.
[4] Kahana and her mother Holocaust survivors who later migrated to the United States.