This matching activity helps students compare the main ways sociologists and health researchers define health, including the biomedical model, social models of health, complementary approaches, and wider sociological ideas about the social construction of health. It also brings in the well-known World Health Organisation definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, which moves beyond a narrow focus on disease alone.
As students work through the activity, they match statements, concepts and named thinkers to the correct approach, then move on to a second stage where they build a short evaluative judgement. This makes the task useful both for first teaching and for revision, because it helps students move from simple identification into comparison, strengths, limitations and analysis.
Health Models and Concepts Matcher
Match each statement to the approach it fits best, then build a short judgement about which model of health is strongest and what its biggest limitation might be.
Models in this activity: biomedical model, social models of health, complementary model, and wider sociology of health / social construction views.
Thinkers and concepts included: Parsons, Illich, Oliver, Blaxter, Shakespeare, Oakley, Giddens, McKeown, Goffman, Navarro, World Health Organisation, Wilkinson and Pickett, medicalisation, iatrogenesis, clinical gaze, sick role, impairment, disability and complementary and alternative medicine.
Step 2: Build a judgement
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