Outline:
Health inequalities are unjust and avoidable and, as a focus of health policy in many governments, are widely studied in public health research. But studies of health inequalities too often ignore the role that health systems and health services play in population health and, as a consequence, their potential to create or reduce inequalities in health. As experts in public health, health services research and health systems research our belief is that the reason for this is that these areas have become siloed as academic disciplines; researchers tend to specialise in their own disciplines with interaction between the three hampered by specialist journals and conferences serving each separately. Health services research, in a well-known definition, ‘is the multidisciplinary field of scientific investigation that studies how social factors, financing systems, organizational structures and processes, health technologies, and personal behaviors affect access to health care, the quality and cost of health care, and ultimately our health and well-being‘ (Lohr and Steinwachs 2002). Health systems research covers two broad areas: the first addresses questions about how health systems are organised and how they develop, while the second focuses on the effects of health systems, such as improvement of health of the population. Both health services research and health systems research can be seen to include the impact on population health. However, the impacts on population level health and inequalities are not often studied. Studies of inequalities in health often incorporate the social determinants of health: the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, age and die. The same societal structures that form the social determinants of health determine the health system structure and impact on access to and the provision of health services and the benefits of health service use to patients with different socioeconomic background. This means that attempts to reduce health inequalities by addressing the social determinants of health must also consider the potential pathway through the health system and the provision of health services.

Aims:
The aim of the workshop is to understand the contribution that health services research and health systems research may have to offer public health research in general and the study of inequalities in health in particular. We will achieve this aim with a structured discussion based on the key questions listed below. Each of the questions will be introduced by short presentations covering (i) health services research and its relationship to public health; (ii) health systems research and its relationship to public health; and (iii) the development of an agenda for the better integration of the three disciplines.

Key Questions:
As a discipline, how can public health be strengthened by including health services research? What contribution can health systems research make to public health? What are the barriers and facilitators to bringing these disciplines into the public health arena?