Sharon Varela

Dr Sharon Varela builds the mental health workforce that rural and remote communities depend on. She is Senior Academic Lead - Mental Health (Senior Lecturer) at the Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health, part of the School of Rural and Remote Health at James Cook University, and Affiliate Associate Professor at Deakin Rural Health. She is a registered psychologist with an Area of Practice Endorsement in Clinical Psychology and has practised for over twenty years across clinical, sport, forensic, disability and health settings.

Her work rests on one mechanism. A trained supervisor is a prerequisite for a student placement, so every supervisor credentialled in a rural community opens that community to students who would otherwise never train there.

Impact at a glance

Supervisor training delivered. 1,055 placements nationally, rated good or excellent in 96.5 per cent of 1,082 responses.

Competitive Commonwealth funding. $1,179,686, National Mental Health Workforce Strategy, 2023 to 2027.

Research funding. Approximately $1.14 million as investigator, with a further $140,000 Queensland Health consultancy.

Equity of access. More than 70 per cent of funded places to First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse, or MMM 3 to 7 participants, against a 50 per cent requirement.

Research cited in policy. Ten policy documents, four policy bodies, two countries.

Field-Normalized Policy Impact. 1.79, close to twice the expected rate for the field.

Parliamentary evidence. Two committees, 2018 and 2021, quoted in both final reports.

Peer review. Ten verified reviews of eight manuscripts across five journals since 2021.

In 2017 Dr Varela created the Murtupuni Psychology and Allied Health Supervisor Training Program, which she still leads. Approved by the Psychology Board of Australia, it is one of very few supervisor training programs in Australia purpose-built for the rural and remote context. She built its curriculum from her own empirical research rather than adapting an existing product, drawing on a systematic review and fifteen focus groups with 29 experienced supervisors across five states, work that established rural and remote supervision as a distinct professional competency. Her relationship with the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service has extended that capacity into a region serving the Torres and Cape.

Her research reaches policy. Her review of maternal guilt was tendered as an exhibit in the New South Wales Inquiry into the convictions of Kathleen Folbigg and is cited in the United Nations State of World Population 2023. Her systematic review of remote professional supervision is cited in the Grattan Institute report A new Medicare: Strengthening general practice, and is the evidence base for the training program itself. She has given evidence to two parliamentary committees and led the drafting of submission 444 to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Mental Health.

She works at the tables where the profession is shaped. She chaired the Australian Rural Health Education Network Mental Health Academic Staff Network, sits on the Australian Psychology Accreditation Council Diversity in Psychology Working Group, and in 2026 was invited by the Psychology Board of Australia to its listening tour on redesigning the psychology higher education pathway, co-authoring the Network submission that followed.

Dr Varela completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2017, examining resilience in sport for young people, including a Trans-Pacific Fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research interests are rural and remote mental health, mental health workforce development, supervision and retention, resilience and wellbeing, telehealth and models of care for communities with no local service, and the translation of research into training, placements and policy.

Rural and remote mental health; mental health workforce development, supervision and retention; professional supervision models and supervisor training; resilience and wellbeing at individual and community level; telehealth and models of care for communities with no local service; translation of research into health workforce policy.

•     Clinical supervision in rural and remote contexts, including professional isolation, dual relationships in small communities, and telehealth ethics.

•     Interprofessional education for psychology and allied health.

•     Work-integrated learning and rural placement models, including student-assisted and student-led service delivery.

•     Cultural safety, health equity and human rights as supervisory competencies.

•     Social and emotional wellbeing, resilience, and mental health in rural and remote communities.

•     Curriculum design and competency assessment in health professional education.