Six college health textbooks published between 1980 and 1987 were analyzed to determine the extent of coverage of 10 selected content areas from "Healthy People: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention." Content areas assessed included: motor vehicle accidents, alcohol and drug misuse, teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, suicide and homicide, smoking, nutrition, exercise and fitness, and stress. Data collection instruments were created for tabulation of textbook page space of four textbook characteristics: text, photographs, tables/charts/illustrations, and "other" characteristics. Readability level was determined using the SMOG formula. A mean of 40.34% of the total content space of the textbooks was devoted to the 10 selected content areas. Motor vehicle accidents, mental illness, and suicide and homicide were not addressed in every textbook. Alcohol and drug misuse accounted for the greatest amount of content space (10.47%). Text comprised the greatest amount of textbook characteristics space (47%). Mean SMOG readability levels of the textbooks ranged from 12.04 to 14.55. Two tables and 11 sets of graphs are provided. (Author/TJH)