Charles Sturt University Vice-Chancellor Professor Renée Leon says the scheme will add to the attractiveness of studying and working in regional Australia, an option an increasing number of students and workers were pursuing.

The plan will see the HELP debts of university medical graduates eliminated, provided they meet a few conditions.

Those who opt to work in remote areas will need to work at least 24 hours a week for a period equivalent to half the length of their degree.

Those in rural and regional areas will also need to work 24 hours a week, but over a period as long as their entire degree.

The new incentive will help bolster CSU's plan to get more doctors into rural areas via its new School of Rural Medicine, which welcomed its first cohort at the university's Orange campus earlier this year.

"The whole aim of this medical school is to ideally produce rural doctors to try and alleviate the rural health crisis," Dean of the school Lesley Forster said in February.

All students in the inaugural cohort come from remote, rural and regional areas, with more than 10 students hailing from the Central West of NSW.

They will spend five years studying and undergoing work placements in regional, regional and remote Australia before starting and forging careers in those same communities.

Vice-chancellor Leon said there was clearly an appetite from prospective students to study medicine and nursing in regional Australia.

"There were more than 800 applications through UAC to study in 2021's first cohort at the School of Rural Medicine at Charles Sturt University in Orange. There have also been more than 900 offers accepted to commence studying nursing at Charles Sturt in semester one of 2022.

"Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show the rate of potentially avoidable death increases from 91 per 100,000 people in the major cities to 136 in outer regional areas and 248 in remote Australia. As an anchor institution in regional Australia, Charles Sturt University will continue to train the skilled and committed health professionals our regional communities desperately need."

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