FATHER IN PARENTING RESEARCH: PANEL DISCUSSION
Professor Rebecca Giallo, Dr Vincent Mancini, and Dr Liana Leach
December 8, 2025​
​
This seminar brings together three experts on engaging fathers in child and family health research, highlighting effective recruitment strategies, common challenges, and key lessons learned. The session will be interactive, with opportunities for discussion and questions.
​
Professor Rebecca Giallo: Recruiting fathers for the Working Out Dads Trial: Reflecting upon what worked well and lessons learnt
It is estimated that 1 in 10 fathers experience mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation during the critical early years of their children’s lives. Despite this, fathers are often described as ‘hard to reach’ in both child and family health research and the universal health care system. We will share our experiences of engaging and recruiting fathers experiencing mental health difficulties and risk factors for poor mental health into the Working Out Dads trial. We will reflect on what worked, barriers to engagement, and lessons we learnt along the way.
​
Dr Vincent​​​​ Mancini: Using the F-Word in Child Health Research: Why and How I Engage Fathers in the Mission for Happy, Healthy Kids
The unique and complementary mechanisms that fathers and father figures play in shaping children’s developmental outcomes have drawn policy and research investment to optimise faster involvement. This presentation shares some of the work being led from The Kids Research Institute Australia, focusing on how our team is addressing key barriers and facilitators to father engagement in child health research. We will explore progress to date with our NICU Dads intervention program, the implementation of a Consumer Academic model of community engagement, and what lessons from these initiatives may help to build genuine and sustainable partnerships between scientists, fathers, and families.
​
Dr Liana Leach: Recruiting fathers for survey research
Understanding the individual experiences of all family members is important for research on mental health and wellbeing. However, it is difficult to do! Much research with parents continues to survey mothers, as fathers can be more difficult to recruit. This presentation will share learnings from two studies recruiting parents to participate in survey research.
About the presenter
Rebecca leads epidemiological and clinical intervention research focused on optimising the mental health of children and families affected by social adversity and intergenerational trauma. She is particularly passionate about men's health in early fatherhood, and family-based interventions to prevent and disrupt intergenerational cycles of poor health within families. This work has been enabled by partnerships with community health services supporting children and their families.
About the presenter
Dr Vincent Mancini is a Senior Research Fellow at The Kids Research Institute Australia and The University of Western Australia. His work seeks to empower fathers and father figures to promote healthy child development. Recent projects span the intersection of employment and family working fly-in-fly-out family arrangements, leveraging existing data infrastructure to explore father-child relationships, the intersection of masculine norms with father-child relationship quality, and an intervention project designed to improve for support for fathers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
About the presenter
Liana Leach’s research examines how work and family environments impact on family wellbeing. She is a social epidemiologist at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University.