Associate Professor Rebecca Disler is a leading clinical researcher addressing practical system-level challenges for regional health services: delayed referral, fragmented workforce and care, avoidable hospitalisation, limited specialist access, and the need to support people closer to home.  Recognised as a “nurse leader in rural health research” (PMID: 37794469), her program has focused on chronic disease, palliative care and aged care models, including mapping service structures across 42 regional health services, auditing over 3,000 rural palliative care referrals, with developing partnered co-design and service evaluation models.

A/Prof Disler has sustained experience in rural and regional health systems, including as Senior Research Fellow in Rural Chronic Health at the University of Melbourne Department of Rural Health in Shepparton, 2017–2022, and as Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow addressing end of life care models in rural communities, 2020-2026. She has secured over $2.8 million in competitive and partnered funding, published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, and holds national and international leadership with Lung Foundation Australia COPDX, Thoracic Society ANZ, and American Thoracic Society. She also delivered the 2025 TSANZ Position Statement on Respiratory Nursing, advancing national strategy for nursing leadership in lung health.   

Rebecca actively works with 10 rural health services building research capacity in under-represented workforces, particularly nursing and rural clinicians. Rebecca has mentored 19 rural clinicians into chief investigators role, clinician-led publications, rural research supervision and service-based research pathways. This building on her established clinical background in Intensive-Care, as Nurse Unit Manager of Acute Respiratory and HDU (St Mary’s Hospital, London), and community-based roles Specialist COPD Nurse roles (Westminster Primary Care Trust), along with her PhD on optimising management of advanced COPD across acute and community settings.