The PhD in Translational Health Sciences (THS) at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences (GW SMHS) seeks to educate the next generation of health scientists to address complex health issues through an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach which promotes systematic uptake of research findings for greater social impact. This paper explores our application of a complex adaptive systems approach to creating a model and conceptual framework to guide our efforts toward expanding and extending traditional research practices, to encouraging doctoral students to cull their interests with more system-wide intentionality, and to fulfill the promise of greater social impact from dissertation research that integrates a translational, cross-disciplinary emphasis.