The La Trobe Rural Health School - which is headquartered in Bendigo - is celebrating its 10th birthday and vice-chancellor John Dewar says the next decade's focus will be on making it a "global research powerhouse".

He would also like more students but says that could be trickier.

The number of Australians enrolling in Bendigo and at other La Trobe campuses have been limited by reforms to student loans, which tied the number of available university places to the growth rate of the working aged population.

Previously, universities could enrol as many students as the market allowed.

"We can obviously try to attract more international students, which we are trying to do, but that will never be a major driver of growth," Professor Dewar said.

"But you don't cap ambitions to be great at research."

The La Trobe Rural Health School has had a heavy focus on rural health research ever since it was founded in 2009. During that time it has attracting more than $8,400,00 in funding.

"We know that, on average, Australians living in rural and remote areas have shorter lives, higher levels of disease and poorer access to health services, compared with their metropolitan counterparts," Professor Dewar said.

The money has helped wide-ranging work including to understand communities from the "inside out", including fighting poor oral health, teaching children to read and helping families of those with dementia navigate complex health systems, head of school Pamela Snow said.

"This critical work has resulted in policy changes at all levels of government, and countless community-led initiatives that have significant and lasting impact," she said.

The school has outposts at all regional La Trobe campuses and Professor Dewar hopes another 10 years will see it grow stronger.

"In the end it comes down to whether we are recognised, globally, as one of the research leaders in rural health," he said.

The school will also continue to focus on teaching new generations of students in the hope they will stay in regional areas once they graduate.

About 70 per cent of students go on to work in regional and rural areas, Professor Dewar said.

"We now have over 3000 students studying in the rural health school across all of our regional campuses. They do about 400,000 hours of student placement and we have 360 clinical partners," he said.

"This far exceeds any expectations we had 10 years ago."

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