Manijeh Berenji MD MPH
Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Joe C Wen School of Population and Public Health (at UC Irvine)
Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor, Division of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, UC Irvine School of Medicine
Biography
Dr. Berenji is a Health Sciences Associate Clinical Professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine within the Department of Medicine and in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of California, Irvine Joe C. Wen School of Population and Public Health. She is part of the UC Irvine Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency Program as Core Faculty. She also serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. She is Chief of Occupational Health and Medical Review Officer at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System, and the Co-Lead for Artificial Intelligence for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Integrated Service Network 22. In addition, she is the Lead for Academic and Community Partnerships at the University of California Center for Climate Health and Equity.
She is board-certified in Occupational and Environmental Medicine and in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine and board-eligible in clinical informatics through the American Board of Preventive Medicine.
Dr. Berenji is a Fellow of the International Academy of Independent Medical Examiners, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Her scholarly and professional work focuses on occupational and environmental medicine, climate and environmental health, health informatics, and artificial intelligence in healthcare. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on occupational and environmental health and health informatics. She has led national efforts focused on the development of guidance statements, strategic frameworks, and implementation approaches to advance Total Worker Health.
Dr. Berenji serves as Associate Editor for the journals: Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, Indoor Air, and the Journal of Climate Change and Health. She is also the Topic Editor for DynaMed.
Return to topEducation
- BS in Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000
- MD, University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences, 2006
- MPH in Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 2011
Distinctions
- AMIA Leadership Award, recognized for outstanding volunteer service advancing the vision, mission, and goals of AMIA with the Climate, Health and Informatics Workgroup, 2024
- ACOEM Executive Committee Outstanding Achievement Award, 2026
Areas of Expertise
- Occupational and Environmental Medicine
- Clinical Informatics
- Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
- Preventive Medicine
- Environmental Epidemiology
- Occupational Toxicology
- Total Worker Health
Recent Publications
- Kiani C.H., Kenleigh D., Berenji M., “Bridging the Gap: A Call for Standardized Medical-Legal Competencies in Occupational Medicine Training” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 68, pp. e388-e389, 2026.
- Zimmerman M., Tang T., Sirinara P., Thompson H., Berenji M., “ACOEM Guidance Statement - The Value Proposition: What OEM Physicians Bring to Healthcare Sustainability” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. Publish Ahead of Print, 2026.
- Schleyer T, Berenji M, Deck M, Chung H, Choi J, Cullen TA, Burdick T, Zaleski A, Craig KJT, Fayanju O, Islam MM, “A call for the informatics community to define priority practice and research areas at the intersection of climate and health: report from 2023 mini-summit” (opens in new tab), Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 971-979, 2025.
- Khan A, Berenji M, Cloeren M, Goldman R, Wheat S, Ogunseitan O, Ayoub S, Rabinowitz P, Chekuri B, Solomon G, “The Imperative to Incorporate Climate Change Competencies into Occupational and Environmental Medicine Training to Safeguard Worker Health” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 414-424, 2025.
- Sharip A, Papanek P, Conlon C, Gean CJ, Khan A, Harrison R, Berenji M, “WOEMA Position Paper and Call-to-Action: California Needs More Physicians Specializing in Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM)” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 67, no. 9, pp. e672-e673, 2025.
- Shamszare H, Chaudhry Z, Berenji M, Choudhury A, “Conceptualizing clinicians' trust in artificial intelligence as a function of their expertise, workload, patient outcome, diagnosis difficulty, and AI accuracy: a systems thinking approach” (opens in new tab), IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 119601-119618, 2025.
- Wisk DF, Gravenstein S, Mihale DPH, Berenji M, “Artificial intelligence moves health care from reactive risk transfer to a proactive risk avoidance system” (opens in new tab), AJPM Focus, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 100411, 2025.
- McLellan R.K., Berenji M., Egbuji A., Fagan K., Nabeel I., Perkison W.B., Rabinowitz P., Santiago R., Sirinara P., Stoneman E., Thompson H., “Harnessing Occupational and Environmental Medicine Expertise to Transform Medical Care: A Catalyst for Mitigating the Human Health Impacts of Climate Change” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 67, pp. e743-e758, 2025.
- Fazen LE, Martin BE 4th, Isakari M, Kowalski-McGraw M, McLellan RK, Ahsan R, Berenji M, “Occupational Electronic Health Records: Recommendations for the Design and Implementation of Information Systems in Occupational and Environmental Medicine Practice-ACOEM Guidance Statement” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 66, no. 11, pp. e614-e627, 2024.
- Berenji M, Baker B, Saberi P, McLellan RK, Wendland D, Trangle KL, Spaeth KR, Green-McKenzie J, Fagan KM, “Addressing Environmental Health: Clinician Training and Practice of Environmental Medicine - ACOEM Guidance Statement” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 66, no. 12, pp. e668-e673, 2024.
- Alya Khan, Manijeh Berenji, Marianne Cloeren, Gina Solomon, Rose Goldman, “Climate Change and Health: Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Frontlines” (opens in new tab), Journal of Graduate Medical Education, vol. 16, no. 6s, pp. 49-52, 2024.
- Kosnett MJ, Berenji M, Burton AD, Durand-Moreau Q, Esty E, Fischman M, Hudson TW 3rd, Nabeel I, Papanek PJ, Sokas R, “ACOEM Position Statement: Workplace Health and Safety Necessitates an Update to Occupational Lead Standard Provisions for Medical Removal Protection, Medical Surveillance Triggers, and the Action Level and Permissible Exposure Level for Lead in Workplace Air: ACOEM Response to OSHA” (opens in new tab), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. e170-e176, 2023.
- Tista Ghosh, Pablo Buitron de la Vega, Manijeh Berenji, Hunter Jackson Smith, “The Role of Preventive Medicine in Improving Societal Health”, Am J Prev Med, vol. 62, no. 4, pp. 653-655, 2022.
- Kerri Wizner, Mason Harrell, Manijeh Berenji, Fraser W. Gaspar, Jennifer Christian, “Managing work disability to help patients return to the job” (opens in new tab), Journal of Family Practice, vol. 70, no. 6, pp. 264-269, 2021.
Most Cited Publications
- Iyer M., Berenji M., Templeton N.S., Gambhir S.S., “Noninvasive Imaging of Cationic Lipid-Mediated Delivery of Optical and PET Reporter Genes in Living Mice” (opens in new tab), Molecular Therapy, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 555-562, 2002.
- May Darwish-Yassine, Manijeh Berenji, Diane Wing, Glenn Copeland, Raymond Y. Demers, Carol Garlinghouse, Angela Fagerlin, Gail E. Newth, Laurel Northouse, Margaret Holmes-Rovner, David Rovner, Jerry Sims, John T. Wei, “Evaluating long-term patient-centered outcomes following prostate cancer treatment: findings from the Michigan Prostate Cancer Survivor study” (opens in new tab), Journal of Cancer Survivorship, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 121-130, 2014.
- Livingston CJ, Berenji M, Titus TM, Caplan LS, Freeman RJ, Sherin KM, Mohammad A, Salisbury-Afshar EM, “American College of Preventive Medicine: Addressing the Opioid Epidemic Through a Prevention Framework” (opens in new tab), American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 454-465, 2022.
Contact Information
Email: mberenji@uci.edu
Address: Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences
Return to topThis profile was created with the help of AI.
Last updated on 5/22/2026.