The World Health Organization (WHO) faces many of the same challenges faced by countries: making the health system strengthening agenda clear and concrete; creating better functional links between programmes with mandates defined in terms of specific health outcomes and those with health systems as their core business; ensuring that the Organization has the capacity to respond to current issues and identify future challenges; and ensuring that institutional assets at each level of the Organization (staff, resources, convening power) are used most effectively. The primary aim of this Framework for Action is to clarify and strengthen WHO’s role in health systems in a changing world. There is continuity in the values that underpin it from its constitution, the Alma Ata Declaration of Health For All, and the principles of Primary Health Care. Consultations over the last year have emphasized the importance of WHO’s institutional role in relationship to health systems. The General Programme of Work (2006-2015) and Medium-term Strategic Plan 2008-2013 (MTSP) focus on what needs to be done. While reaffirming the technical agenda, this Framework concentrates more on how the WHO secretariat can provide more effective support to Member States and partners in this domain.