Dr Gartland was awarded her Professional Doctorate of Health Psychology at Swinburne University of Technology in 2009, after completing a BSc (Psych) at the University of Melbourne.

She leads the Resilience and Mental Health research program at Intergenerational Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne Australia. Her research focus is women's and children’s health, and in particular, resilience in populations experiencing social adversity. Her research over the last 10 years has focused on the impact of intimate partner violence on maternal health and child outcomes. She has a particular focus on social adversity and building the evidence needed to better support families, including families experiencing violence.

Dr Gartland has a high profile internationally for her work on resilience. The Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire developed by CI Gartland is now being used in studies underway in the UK, Canada, USA, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, India, Turkey, Croatia and Malaysia, and has been translated into Dutch, Filipino, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Persian, Spanish and Turkish.

The Childhood Resilience Study, led by Dr Gartland involves partnerships with the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia and Wadja Aboriginal Family Place, Royal Children’s Hospital. Co-design of the measure with Aboriginal and refugee background communities has ensured the Child Resilience Questionnaire is an inclusive measure that is relevant for populations often excluded from research - particularly measure development.

She has been instrumental in establishing Aboriginal and Refugee Working groups and implementing stakeholder engagement strategies to inform the design and conduct of the study, including the interpretation of data. A parent and self-report version has been published, with a school report version in development.

Dr Gartland is collaborating with national and international experts on intimate partner violence, resilience and child and maternal health. She is a lead investigator in the Stronger Futures Center for Research Excellence, leading Priority Three Resilience and Prevention in the context of intergenerational trauma (2021-2025).

She was a member of the PreVAiL Network, an international research collaboration of over 60 researchers and partners funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Institute for Gender and Health. The collaboration brought together researchers and decision-maker partners to produce and share knowledge that will help children, women and men exposed to child maltreatment and family violence. Her work on intimate partner violence and health consequences for women and children is informing the Australian Victorian Government’s Review of Maternal and Child Health Services, and the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence.

She is also working closely with the Aboriginal Family Study Aboriginal Advisory Group to analyse and interpret data gathered in a cohort study of mothers and Aboriginal children in South Australia. The Aboriginal Families study is informing health and social services in South Australia to better meet the needs of Aboriginal families.