ALTHOUGHI worries about sickness are common topics of popular discussion, relatively little attention has been devoted to research on the effects of personal concerns about health. One survey of attitude,s councerning six serious diseases has sought to identify some sources of health anxiety (1), but few attempts have been made elsewhere to assess the impact of such apprehensions on public support of health programs. Since the protection and promotion of public health and welfa,re have been important local responsibilities, health proposals that require public approval or acceptance have been common and signific.ant issues in many communities. Unless attention is focused on the role of health concerns in shaping opinions, on public health issues, an important va,riable in effoirts to adopt preventive health programs will be overlooked. The purpose of this investigation, therefore, is, to examine the effects, of expressed health concerns on attitudes, and behavior regarding an important conmunity health program. Despite relative neglect in prior research on public opinion, anxiety or fear ha,s occupied a prominent role in experimental studies of techniques for securing the a,doption of recommended health practices. In a classic study, Janis and Feshbach found that communications which arouseid minimal fears were more likely to be successful in persuading students to adopt recommended denta,l health procedures than were strong or moderate fear-arousing messages (2). Although the results of the original study were modified by subsequent investigations (3, 4), the belief generally has been accepted that fea,r or anxiety is an unsuccessful b,asis, for encouraging people to' take preventive health action (5). Recently this assumption has been challenged by the finding that the association between fear or anxiety and preventive health behavior is affected by socioeconomic status. In a replication of the Janis-Feshbach experiment, Haef ner discovered that the minimal fear-arousing message was most effective in encouraging children from high-status families to adolpt endorsed practices in toothbrushing and oral hygiene and that the strong fear-arousing message was most successful with low-status, students (6). Rosenstock noted (7):