Mihoko Tanabe has worked in both international and domestic refugee health. Prior to transitioning to medicine, she worked for almost a decade with a New York-based humanitarian research and advocacy organization that aimed to enhance health access for refugees and internally displaced persons affected by conflicts and natural disasters worldwide. Over the years, she has conducted research on reproductive health-related issues in Haiti, Kenya, Nepal, the Thai-Burma border, South Sudan, and Uganda, and has overseen projects in Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Jordan, Malaysia, and Pakistan. Some of her projects included piloting community-based approaches to providing sexual and reproductive health services in conflict settings; identifying good practice programming for adolescent reproductive health; and addressing the intersections between sexual and reproductive health and disability in humanitarian contexts. She further advocated for good quality SRH services in conflict and natural disaster settings through reviewing and developing global policy and technical guidance; conducting inter-agency assessments on minimum SRH services at the onset of emergencies; and organizing and presenting at meetings and fora. She also sat on the steering committee of the Inter-agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises, a global network of SRH in crises practitioners.

Now as a family medicine physician in Boston, she sees newly arriving refugees to Boston in her weekly refugee clinic. She is working to strengthen refugee and immigrant health for health equity at Boston Medical Center through exploring how to improve health access and health outcomes for this population.