March 23, 2026 By Hannah Fairbanks Chronic pain can touch every part of a person’s life—and in the Anesthesia Department at UCSF, a growing team of pain psychologists is transforming how patients learn to manage it. The UCSF Center for Pain Medicine provides comprehensive care for a broad range of pain conditions in both adults and children. The main clinic is in the Bayfront Medical Building on the Mission Bay campus, and there is also a satellite clinic in Marin County. In just over a year, the UCSF Center for Pain Medicine has quintupled its pain psychology team—expanding access to innovative care for patients across the Bay Area.These pain psychologists provide evidence-based psychological assessment and treatment to help patients manage chronic pain and improve functioning. This includes delivering therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, and completing pre-surgical psychological evaluations for neuromodulation devices. They also collaborate across specialties for consultation and treatment, including on opioid tapering, perioperative optimization, and helping patients cope with pain across a range of medical conditions.From mindfulness, biofeedback and pain neuroscience education to Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Psychologically-Informed Physical Therapy (PIPT), UCSF’s expanding pain psychology program is helping patients move beyond pain and toward possibility.PIPT is individual and group treatment conducted collaboratively with pain psychology and physical therapy, targeting kinesiophobia and neuroplastic pain through a pain neuroscience education lens. This program is offered in collaboration with a newly added physical therapist to the pain clinic, Vincent Ann, DPT, PT. Another new offering from the team is “Eating to Ease Pain: Your Anti-Inflammatory Toolkit,” which is a nutrition and chronic pain education group that focuses on practical knowledge, skills, and resources. It is co-facilitated with Osher Center integrative dietician Danica Cowan.At the intersection of science, compassion, and collaboration, the department’s pain psychologists are redefining what comprehensive pain care looks like. Subspecialties within the pain medicine group include sleep, trauma, and nutrition. The team also offers a Pain X Pain Education Group, a free, monthly group open to the UCSF community to provide education and resources on pain psychology, as well as a Pain Coping Skills Group, an 8-week group based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for pain. Additionally, psychologists in the clinics speak Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin.Later this year, the group will provide some new offerings, including a Movement and Awareness group for chronic pain, targeting individuals with pain and history of trauma, as well as a Pelvic Pain Women’s group.These programs and services would not be possible without the pain psychologists themselves.Meet the team Valerie W. Jackson, PhD, MPH Image A psychologist and Director of Pain Psychology at the UCSF Center for Pain Medicine, Dr. Jackson co-founded the Psychologically-Informed Physical Therapy (PIPT) clinic and is the founder and training director of the UCSF Pain Psychology Practicum program.Dr. Jackson specializes in helping individuals manage pain and improve quality of life using evidence-based approaches including biofeedback, meditation, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). She also has expertise in Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for pain. Her clinical and research interests include integration of pain psychology in multidisciplinary care, program development, and reducing stigma of health and mental health conditions. Her recent publications and presentations have focused on developing interventions to address opioid stigma and HIV stigma in Botswana.Dr. Jackson’s professional service includes serving on the board of the American Association of Pain Psychologists and membership in the UCSF Pain and Addiction Research Center. In her free time, she enjoys cycling, exploring the Bay Area with her family, and traveling.Jennifer Klein, PsyD Image The newest member of the pain psychology team, Dr. Klein is a clinical psychologist specializing in evidence-based interventions and assessment for adults with chronic pain. She uses approaches including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), Mindfulness, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for chronic pain. She is also an Empowered Relief instructor.Dr. Klein views pain as simultaneously a universal and deeply individual experience, intertwined with every facet of a patient’s life. This complex interplay is what initially drew her to pain, and she is passionate about helping patients untangle this complexity to enact meaningful change in their life.Dr. Klein earned her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium, then completed her APA-accredited doctoral internship at the VA Northern California Health Care System, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Pain Psychology at Stanford University School of Medicine. She takes a whole-person approach to pain, examining how biological, psychological, and social factors interact to shape a patient’s experience. In her free time, she enjoys exploring the Bay Area with her Australian Shephard, Kumo.Kate Mohan, PsyD Image Dr. Mohan is a Clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of children, adolescents, and young adults with chronic pain. In her role as a psychologist with the Center for Pain Medicine, she sees patients for assessment and individual treatment. She is currently co-developing a psychotherapy group for young women with pelvic pain with Valerie Jackson, PhD, Director of Pain Psychology. She is also working with our pediatric anesthesiologists to build programming for children and adolescents. She primarily works at the Bayfront Campus and spends some time in Walnut Creek.Dr. Mohan approaches pain psychology from a holistic perspective that includes the individual, family, and social systems. She is especially passionate about working with young people whose pain is compounded by traumatic experiences and/or minority stress.She earned her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium, then completed an APA-accredited doctoral internship in Health Service Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Pediatric Pain Psychology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Throughout her training, Dr. Mohan worked in many different settings including the emergency department and inpatient psychiatric consultation service, outpatient pediatric and general psychology clinics, community mental health clinics, and schools.Norma Stacey Monico-Cristales, PsyD Image Dr. Monico-Cristales is a clinical psychologist specializing in chronic pain management. With undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology and Ethnic Studies, she trained with culturally diverse and medically/socially complex populations including LGBTQ+ and homeless populations in San Francisco as well as Latino immigrant populations and veterans, including those with spinal-cord injury. She completed a Health Psychology internship at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans Hospital in Phoenix, AZ before graduating from Stanford-PGSP PsyD Consortium. Her dissertation focused on the stigmatizing experiences of chronic pain impacted individuals in health care spaces and the effect of this on pain self-efficacy. Dr. Monico-Cristales completed fellowship in pain psychology with Stanford School of Medicine’s Division of Pain Medicine where she was later hired as a clinical instructor.Dr. Monico-Cristales’s interest in chronic pain-impacted populations is multilayered, but particularly informed by an awareness of health, and other social inequities, and the impact of our histories and ongoing stressors on mind and body. She often discusses with her patients “connecting the dots” between our past and present, so that we better understand ourselves; discover what, if anything, we want to change; and ultimately, find choice and healing. Dr. Monico-Cristales works with primarily CBT-CP, ACT-CP, mindfulness modalities and serves Spanish-speaking patients. Dr. Monico-Cristales is a San Francisco local and has been here since her family immigrated in the 1980s. She enjoys spending time exploring with her husband, hanging out with her family, including their many dachshunds.Stacy Wang, PhD Image Dr. Wang is a pain psychologist specializing in the interaction between pain, trauma, and the nervous system. Her clinical work is grounded in mind–body, trauma-sensitive, and neurophysiologically informed care, with an emphasis on building somatic awareness, emotional safety, and nervous system regulation. Following a Health Service Psychology internship at Stanford University, Wang earned her doctorate in Counseling Psychology at Fordham University. She completed a fellowship in Pain Psychology at San Mateo Medical Center. With roots in Shanghai and Hong Kong, she is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese and works with Chinese-speaking patients.On a personal level, Dr. Wang has a long-standing passion for detective stories and maintains a small writing practices with the hope of one day writing her own. She is drawn to the process of noticing subtle clues, holding uncertainty, and allowing meaning to emerge over time, which closely mirrors her work with neuroplastic pain that often presents as mysterious, inconsistent, or difficult to explain through structure alone. Working with chronic pain similarly requires curiosity, patience, and a willingness to explore patterns and context rather than rushing to conclusions, and this perspective deeply informs how she approaches clinical work with her patients.
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