Ma. Esmeralda Silva, the team's Project Manager, is a graduate student at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, conducting a Master of Science in Public Policy and Management. She is also a research associate at the Carnegie Mellon University Center for Economic Development. Prior to pursuing her master's degree at CMU, she was an adjunct professor at the Ateneo de Davao University in the Philippines where she taught Public Policy: Theory and Practice and Managerial Communication to graduate students at the School of Business and Governance. Prior to that, she worked for a watershed management project in the Philippines as an Information, Education and Communication Manager. Ms. Silva has a baccalaureate degree in Development Communication, major in Education Communication and a master's degree in Public Affairs, major in Strategic Planning and Policy Studies

"Virtual Community in Health Care:  Prospects in Peru" is a capstone project undertaken by a team of Masters of Public Policy and Management students at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School.  TechBridgeWorld is launching a new public health initiative, learning what technologies could best assist with global public health challenges and exploring the creation of a virtual community for health care practitioners.  To assist with the initial stages of this new project, TechBridgeWorld has benefited from the policy expertise of this team of Master of Science in Public Policy and Management (MSPPM) students at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School.  This group project was conducted as a collaboration between TechBridgeWorld and the Heinz School in fulfillment of the MSPPM Systems Synthesis Project requirement. 

A virtual community would provide unique opportunities to share best practices among peers in the public health field.  This group project aims to design a template to determine the feasibility of a virtual community for health care practitioners in developing communities.  The planned feasibility template will be composed of two parts:  the social network among potential participants and the IT-readiness of the community. 

As a case study, the students are exploring the feasibility of a virtual community composed of health professionals in Peru.  Their study focuses on reproductive health professionals including doctors, nurses and midwives as potential participants in this virtual community.  This project is being conducted with the assistance of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Peru's Department of Health.