How can you follow your doctor's orders if you don't understand them? That's the challenge faced by more than 90 million Americans with low levels of health literacy, defined as a patient's ability to understand basic health information and instructions for care. Health literacy comes in handy when it comes to reading dosage instructions on a bottle of prescription drugs, or interpreting a doctor's advice for chronic illness management.

Health Literacy Missouri(HLM) was formed to help improve healthcare literacy by providing educational information in plain language and resources to help healthcare professionals better communicate with their patients. Officials from the new nonprofit say that while health literacy may be a new concept to Missourians, its impact has a huge effect on both their health and their wallets. A study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill revealed that low health literacy costs Missouri residents $5.2 billion annually, as uninformed patients are more likely to pursue expensive, unnecessary medical services.