Human resources education for health workers has been predominantly discipline-oriented and fragmented, influencing research design and, in turn, scientific output. Several authors argue that university education should transition from disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity. To gather the theoretical underpinnings for this subject of international interest, a literature search was conducted in the PubMed, EBSCO, and SciELO databases in 2012, using the terms "transdisciplinary and translational research" in Spanish and English. The majority of authors believe that identifying problems from different perspectives by specialists and community members and leaders will be conducive to more effective intersectoral interventions. They suggest undertaking organizational change to reshape reshaping work styles and self-organizational forms of scientific activity. Finally, a transdisciplinary model for public health research has been proposed that is based on traditional project design tools, but with variations borrowed from a complex systems approach.