Among the various bills making their way around the Roundhouse this legislative session will be a request by the New Mexico Department of Health for $1 million.

That amount doesn't sound like much, considering that the U.S. Congress has been throwing around numbers in the billions and trillions rather casually lately. But given our state's $450 million budget shortfall this year, it seems unlikely the $1 million request will be granted.

That's too bad, because Health Department officials were planning to use that money to fight childhood obesity in New Mexico.

According to the state Department of Health, about a quarter of kids in New Mexico are overweight — a rate that has almost quadrupled in the past three decades. Overall, this is still low when compared to the national average of 31 percent, but some groups of kids in our state are hit harder by obesity than others. About 32 percent of Native American high-school students are overweight, compared to 26 percent of Hispanic students and 19 percent of white non-Hispanics.

You've probably guessed by now that this column will be all about our state government's approach to obesity. And to those of you who haven't already moved on to the crossword puzzle — by the way, 23 down is "penguin" — I promise to keep the boring statistics to a minimum. And I won't use the words "policy," "budget" or "resources," at least not again.

In 2006, the New Mexico Interagency for the Prevention of Obesity was created with the notion that our state needed to formulate a consistent anti-obesity approach. Eight state departments joined forces, with the Department of Health leading the way.

They decided to focus on our future — namely our children. Their big pet project was the Healthy Kids program. Their slogan: "Building a fit future — one city at a time." Their first makeover victim was Las Cruces, specifically Coplee Elementary.

They threw all of their best and brightest anti-obesity ideas at both the school and the city to see what would stick.

"We wanted to blast the city with a really great program," said Jessica Sutin, deputy secretary for programs at the Department of Health.

Overall, the main goal was education and, hopefully, prevention. At the school, the goal was more tangible but difficult: getting the kids to pick healthy foods and exercise more.

They got the mayor, city council, restaurants and other state-government entities involved. They made posters and a Web site (www.healthykidsnm.org). They made Las Cruces more "walkable" by creating more than a dozen pedestrian trails. They taught kids how to eat and exercise. They provided curriculum for teachers. In the schools, they held food tastings, planted edible gardens, amped up physical education classes and moved recess to before lunch.

The result? "It's working," said Sutin. "We're getting the community involved and excited." So, the education portion of the program is hitting home. The message is out there (at least in Las Cruces) that obesity is a real problem.

But all of the education in the world isn't going to matter if parents can't even recognize that their own children are overweight. And that's a real problem.

In one study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Minnesota, the parents of 46 overweight kids were asked if they thought their child was overweight. Only 13 percent replied yes. So how do you bring up the sensitive topic of obesity with parents who think their overweight child isn't fat?

Sutin is considering one radical idea: a health report card. "It's controversial," she said.

Why? Because the report card would list a child's height, weight and body mass index. It's an idea that has been used since 2004 in Arkansas, where about 40 percent of all kids are overweight. Newspapers at the time had lots of fun coming up with cute headlines: "In Arkansas report card, 'F' may stand for fat." But a few years later, Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe considered scrapping the plan. According to The Associated Press, he was worried that the report cards had "a lot of negative, unintended consequences" and hurt some children's self-esteem. The solution was to make it easier for parents to opt out of the weigh-ins and only weigh kids every other year. The results so far haven't been phenomenal. The obesity rate among Arkansas kids has only fallen 0.6 percent. But supporters say that any decrease is good.

That's something Sutin believes as well, for both adults and children. Although the Department of Health is mainly targeting its anti-obesity efforts at students, we adults haven't been completely forgotten. They are considering other interesting ideas, like putting calories on restaurant menus and providing free use of bicycles in cities. "At this point," Sutin said, "I'm willing to try anything."

A pre-medical student at The University of New Mexico, Christine Barber has been a journalist in New Mexico for 14 years. Contact her at tlg@sfnewmexican.com or via her blog at etastesantafe.com.