In an effort to capture the feeling of the operations of the Health Start projects, the experiences of eight of the 29 local projects organized in 1971, representative of the mix of approaches taken in the first year, are described, with emphasis on obstacles and strategies as well as successes. The projects reviewed are in Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, Michigan, Oregon, Maine, Arizona, and Oklahoma. Diversity is stressed regarding methods of detecting health problems, sources of health services, facility arrangements, educational instruction methods, and staffing. All of them have the same objectives: to increase the number of disadvantaged children receiving adequate medical and dental services, to develop methods of ensuring the delivery of health services in areas of limited health care resources, and to develop better methods of coordinating and using existing resources to provide health care to disadvantaged children. (LH)