PHAA
The inaugural Preventive Mental Health Symposium, which happens in Melbourne and online on 12 March, marks the first time experts from the mental health and public health sectors get together to discuss ways to protect and promote mental wellbeing.
It’s hosted by the Public Health Association of Australia, in partnership with Beyond Blue.
Much of the program concerns the mental health of children and young people. Professor Sharon Goldfeld, Director of the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital’s, and Theme Director for Population Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, will speak in a session about children’s first decade.
Tell us about yourself. What’s been your career trajectory to date, and why did you decide to lead the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne?
I’ve had an unusual career as a developmental paediatrician.
I realised very early on that even if I was the best paediatrician, seeing one child at a time was not going to be enough to make a difference to the whole population.
So I moved into public health research pretty quickly to complement my clinical work.
Probably the turning point in my professional life was my Harkness Fellowship (in health care policy 1999-2000) in Boston.
It was focussed on the early years, and inspired me to consider what policy actions might be necessary for real change and the clear need for government action.
Rather than standing on the outside of policy, I thought it was important to learn the policy ropes from the inside.
So I came back and worked part time in the Victorian Government in public health and then in education, and at the same time kept my research career going, and was also a clinician. I sort of had a foot in every camp.
I worked for the state government for about 10 years, and then came back to research more purposefully to do all the things one needs to do as a researcher to have a successful career.
From there, I’ve been lucky to be able to build up a pubic health research career that’s straddled health and social care and education, and really focussed on equity.
My research and clinical career has also happened at the Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH) at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Royal Children’s Hospital.
I was very fortunate to be able to take over the leadership of that Centre from Professor Frank Oberklaid in late 2019 – note to oneself – try not to take on a major leadership role during a global pandemic!
What have been your proudest achievements or successes to date?
Outside my family, it’s hard to say.
The Harkness Fellowship really gave me the time and perspective to consider a major career change that was pretty different. I was proud to being doing stuff that was really different.
Working in government, I say to people – I went for two years and stayed for 10.
It’s a really seductive environment for people who want to try to change things. (That may surprise some people).
I’m extremely proud of our people at CCCH. Building teams of other passionate researchers who are really keen on thinking about prevention and equity has been extraordinary, and I have learnt so much.
The final thing was co-leading the effort on getting an Australian Early Development Census, which is a population-wide measure of child development based on teachers’ reports on every child starting school, and done every three years.
This finally put data in the hands of communities and policymakers to try and drive more data driven decision-making.
The AEDC has shone a light on the inequities in children’s development as they start school.
These haven’t shifted for over a decade; so it’s time to do things differently if we want a different outcome.
What would you like delegates to gain from your presentation about the challenges which are impacting children’s mental health, and what works to promote and protect their mental health?
There’s no doubt that issues associated with children’s mental health are front of mind for a lot of people, from parents and young people themselves right through to providers and policy makers.
There will never, ever be enough mental health services for everybody, and nor would we want everyone to be heading down that pathway.
One of the reasons I’m speaking is about what are our mental health prevention options, from early intervention in the life course, through to the sorts of systems we need to keep children healthier.
I think that’s the story of the Symposium – how do we keep our children healthy, how do we do it at a system wide level, and what is the role of different work forces and sectors for young children and their families in particular?
What are the sorts of options and opportunities we have?
I’m delighted and honoured to be asked to be part of the Symposium and panel.
Hopefully we will have a robust conversation about what some of these options might be.
We may end up discussing the different potential policy/service levers at the parent level, at the child level, and at the population level.
To me, the question is how many ambulances can we prevent being needed at the bottom of the cliff when it’s very late, knowing that we could prevent issues had we done things differently much earlier.
There are no silver bullet solutions to the increasing complexity of preventing mental health problems, but the question of the right “stack” of approaches has become increasingly important.
I think we’ll have different viewpoints among the panel, and that should make it really interesting for everyone.
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