Kristin Avicolli

Kristin Avicolli is a social worker who cares for pediatric and young adult patients. Working with children and adolescents, she assesses their needs, provides counseling and advocates for them and their families. She supports patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings. In the gender clinic, she helps facilitate conversations between young people and their families around gender identity. Her approach to care focuses on identifying strengths and respecting peoples innate ability to heal. She draws on aspects of mindfulness as well as solution-focused, psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral models of care. She is particularly interested in the ways people adjust to life-altering events, the neuroscience behind lasting behavior change and other aspects of human resiliency. She is passionate about social justice and seeks to affirm all genders, ethnicities, cultures and religious backgrounds.

In research, Avicolli's primary work is to recruit participants for the UCSF Gender Journey Project, which looks at the gender pathways and mental health of prepubescent transgender and gender-expansive youths as influenced by transition status, family support and school environment.

Avicolli earned a master's degree in social work at the University of Washington.