Today we’d like to introduce you to Beth Reeves.
Hi Beth, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
This is a great time to reflect as we come to the close of 2025. If I were to talk to my younger self, I would say, “I see you and you’ll be ok.” I was a competitive All-Star athlete with a leadership mentality. It doesn’t surprise me that I have been in healthcare, and it doesn’t surprise me that I have spent a majority of my career with the geriatric population. As a young child I would help elderly adults put out their trash, take care of lawns and run errands. What I didn’t know is that I would be an Occupational Therapist (OT). That story started when a student OT and co-worker introduced me to the profession. OT was the perfect marriage between psychology and physical health. After completing my undergraduate program at Temple University in Sports Psychology, I entered Thomas Jefferson University and graduated in 1991 with my Occupational Therapy Certification. I have practiced in many settings with different populations. Please visit AOTA (https://www.aota.org/) to learn more about occupational therapy. During my career I advanced from staff level to the director level and was able to guide patients and families, implement programs, mentor students and other professionals, build teams and relationships and experience personal growth beyond measure.
Through divine providence, I moved from New Jersey to South Carolina in 2018 and this is where a new season began. It’s not important that I started as a Director of Rehabilitation at a system who would later restructure and eliminate my position. It’s not important that in the last two years I have changed employers three times. It is important that the closed doors and open windows were a heavenly orchestrated portal that led to entrepreneurship and a return to higher education.
As I look back on these events, for reasons that weren’t previously understood, I noticed the healthcare system and the population in SC was different from NJ. I started writing and researching health literacy in 2018 while I was finishing my Masters’s Degree in Healthcare Quality and Safety. Health literacy is the ability to gather, access, understand health information, and to use that information to make informed decisions about your health. When I left that hospital system in 2023, I took some time off and returned to health literacy research. This is where my current story really takes shape.
In the summer of 2023, I created HealthSpeak, LLC. In 2025 I completed my Post Professional Doctoral Degree in Occupational Therapy with a concentration on Health Promotion at Moravian University. Presently, I am still practicing as an Occupational Therapist, while I build something that serves the community and fulfills my purpose. The mission is simple: use multi-sector efforts to improve community health outcomes through health literacy education.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There’s an old church song that says, “I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God…I’ve learned to depend upon His Word.” I can’t recall an easy time in my life that wasn’t filled with hills, mountains and valleys. It’s life. The youngest of four, my struggle started in elementary school when our broken family moved from Philadelphia to New Jersey to live with my grandparents. I believe they did the best they could in trying to raise grandchildren in their senior years. My grandfather was my favorite person on earth, but my grandmother had some mental health issues, I’m sure. I left home at 17 and lived with my high school friend and her family. Maya Angelou talks about having many clouds and also having rainbows in her clouds. The rainbow people got me through. So many angels surrounded me, and I worked to be independent and resourceful. After getting my B.S. at Temple, I wasn’t making enough money to really advance in the proverbial “American Dream”. Becoming an OT propelled me financially and opened many doors. For the first time, there was peace in the valley.
I met and married my best friend, John, and we have raised three children in our thirty years of marriage. We now can spoil our two grandsons. We have both survived having a premature birth, cancer, buried and cared for loved ones, survived life’s struggles and continue to enjoy each other’s company. Our greatest moments are spent fishing and routing for the Philadelphia sports teams.
This business journey is new to me. I wouldn’t call it a struggle. I would call it a nuance. Everything I am doing is new and exciting. I had to learn how to start a business, how to register, how to look up a name, how to design a logo, website, etc. I am having a wonderful time learning who I am and what I can do given the resources I have found. The toughest thing to manage is insecurity and self-doubt. I am working on that continuously.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about HealthSpeak,LLC?
I mentioned earlier the mission is to improve community health literacy through education. Health literacy thought leaders have been around for over two decades, and yet, you hardly hear about it outside of organizations who work for healthcare systems. Nine out of ten adults in the US report difficulty managing their healthcare. HealthSpeak is focused on bringing evidence-based solutions directly to the community where patients and caregivers exist. That means meeting people where they are and teaching people how to communicate with healthcare professionals. Resources already exist. The problem is few organizations are adhering to national toolkits which guide health systems through proven strategies to improve health literacy. Other HealthSpeak curriculums are developed for students in healthcare professions in an effort to prepare the upcoming workforce. Workshops vary in length and information based on the group dynamics. Any workshop or presentation can be customized. Currently, I am collaborating with a local school district to implement a pilot program for Youth Ambassadors for Health Literacy. My belief is that we need to start teaching young people how to manage their healthcare, so we impact the future.
Here’s the big picture: health illiteracy leads to increased burden of care for the country, increased personal cost, chronic conditions, overuse of emergency rooms, medication errors and death. HealthSpeak can educate the public on lowering these risks through educational opportunities that match your organization, club, church, school, agency or community program. As healthcare forces us from paper to electronics, the reality of leaving communities behind has hit hard. HealthSpeak would love to partner young adults with seniors to help bridge the digital health literacy divide.
What sets us apart is the attention to the impact of humility and humanity in healthcare. Combining health literacy strategies within the conversation of the impact of humanism is a new approach. Bridging the health literacy gap between providers and consumers of healthcare will happen at the intersection of a healthcare encounter. This encounter will decide health outcomes. Both parties must seek to actively listen, respect and take ownership of their actions and be accountable for their behavior. Thirty-five years in the healthcare system has provided a front row seat to this encounter, and those years of experience are wrapped up in our company’s solutions.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
If you are a healthcare system looking to educate professionals on health literacy skills, contact us for a program that fits your needs.
If you are an educational institution for healthcare professionals or high school students, contact us to learn about workshops geared to students.
Our specialty is geared to community outreach in underserved and marginalized communities. Any organization who gathers individuals together for growth and education and community development, contact us to customize a program to present important to improve public health outcomes.
Pricing:
- individual pricing available
Contact Info:
- Website: https://health-speak.org/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/health-speak-097a94278/
- Address: 205 Sandy Lake Rd Columbia, SC 29229
- Office phone: 803-967-9044
- Email: healthliteracy@health-speak.org
