Thoughts from a Thinker in Residence

Craig Garfield, MD, FCHIP’s founder and director, reflects on time spent “Down Undah” in  Australia 

“Thinker in Residence” may just be the greatest job in the world. When Jacqui MacDonald, Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and convenor of the Australian Fatherhood Research Consortium, asked me to be Deakin University’s 2025 Thinker/Entrepreneur in Residence (TIER) spending several months in Australia “thinking” with her and the team, I was overjoyed.  

Deakin’s Thinkers & Industry Experts in Residence (TIER) program brings together world leaders from academia and industry to provide a critical understanding of their field. TIER leaders collaborate with Deakin University staff and students across a wide range of disciplines. While Deakin is one of Australia’s youngest institutions, having just turned 50 in 2024, it is one of the most successful. Deakin boasts world-class research and teaching, ranking in the top 200 universities in the world. 

As a TIER leader within Deakin, I spent time in the SEED Lifespan Strategic Research Centre, the only research program of its kind across Australia, conducting world-leading research on the developmental origins of mental health and family wellbeing. The centre focuses on promoting mental health and preventing mental disorders from early childhood to adulthood and into the next generation. SEED Lifespan has published over 2500 peer-reviewed articles, which have been cited over 60,000 times in the scientific literature and in over 400 policy documents worldwide since just 2014. One of the key focuses in SEED Lifespan is research focusing on boys as they transition to men and fathers, uncovering the psychosocial impacts that affect fathering across generations. 
 

Starting in February 2025, I joined Deakin to work together towards challenging and extending the current understanding of fathers in families. We focused on public health approaches to understanding fathers and father engagement in clinical settings, with a goal to inform future research strategies and directions. During my visit, I presented FCHIP’s fatherhood work to Australian researchers, practitioners and leading fatherhood and family service organizations from across the country. And I learned of the extraordinary work being done in Australia. One of the highlights was an audit of fatherhood support initiatives where we mapped out the future of fatherhood support in Australia.  

Now that I am back in the US, I wanted to share some of my reflections on my time “thinking”.

Some obvious differences

Australia may not feel too foreign for many Americans. Stereotypes of kangaroos and koalas, Steve Irwin yelling “Crickey”, or ads for the Australian Outback easily come to most Americans’ minds. Almost immediately though you notice the differences. Perhaps the most obvious is the language and accent, where Australians might switch American’s “t” with a “d” so “butter” becomes “bettah” and differences in vowels make our “car” become their “caah”. And of course walking and driving all occur on the left side of the sidewalk or street–but who knew that Aussies also swim on the left too! 

Some more nuanced observations

Yet it is the subtle differences between the US and Australia that I found most interesting. These are differences you may not necessarily notice on a one or even two week visit to Australia—too many of the obvious differences vie for your attention. But during an extended time embedded in a different culture, the more nuanced differences pop up.

As a pediatrician-researcher, it was remarkable to see how public policies that support all Australians and especially families are implemented. Policies like universal healthcare covered by the government and universal paid family leave that allows parents time and support to take care of their children are the most obvious. In fact, starting in July 2025, parents–including fathers– in Australia will receive 120 days of paid family leave after the birth or adoption of a child. The US has no such paid leave programs, despite evidence of the value for families, fathers and children.

Another less obvious but huge difference is the attention paid across the country of the importance of mental health. This focus is not on one particular population, but really is recognized as important across all ages and groups in Australia. In the US, we recently had a short blip of acknowledgement of the mental health and stress struggles parents are experiencing with the 2024 report “Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents”. The Surgeon General recognized that 33% of parents reported high levels of stress compared to 20% of non-parents and 41% of parents reported being “so stressed they could not function” most days.  In Australia, recent initiatives from the government such as the National Mental Health Policy and Vision 2030 have started to address mental health. This, coupled with a remarkable network of service providers and philanthropies that help maintain this attention on mental health, seems helps to reduce stigma, encourage help-seeking, and keeps this important topic in the national conversations. This mental health focus is remarkably inclusive of fathers too. National organizations like Beyond Blue, Panda, Dads Group, and SMS4Dads focus on the unique needs of fathers, while Movember, the organization that encourages people to grow and then shave mustaches to bring attention to men’s health, keeps the conversation going in a fun and playful way with real results.  Beyond Blue even has signs above the urinals in a Brisbane mall raising awareness around men’s mental health!  

Finally, having a population of only 26 million people living on an island as large as the continental United States means, with a little travel, you can meet with nearly all fatherhood stakeholders from across the country in one room —and we did!  About halfway through my thinkership, Deakin hosted a 3-day convening of 40 leaders in the fatherhood space called “Mapping the Future of Fatherhood in Australia”.  The objective was to have each constituency—service providers, programmatic leaders, policy experts, researchers, clinicians, and philanthropy—participate in a concept and asset mapping exercise to lay out the fatherhood map across the country, identifying fatherhood-related opportunities as we went along.

From supportive federal policies for families to mental health awareness to intentionally planning the future for fathers, I came away from my time as a Thinker in Residence amazed at the ability to bring committed people together around a common goal, to encourage constructive debate while still building consensus, and maintain an eye toward the goal of improving outcomes for families, children and fathers. 

Craig Garfield, MD
June, 2025

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