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Mental and emotional well-being are intimately entangled with immigration status, personal relationships, and the broader political environment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in South Texas including interviews with mixed-status families, this article illustrates the spillover impacts affecting mental and emotional health of family members with different legal statuses. Building on the notion of "structural vulnerability,„ we propose the concept of familial vulnerability, a lens which highlights how racialization, legal status, and discrimination affect the family unit. Our analysis of the mental health impacts on family members within mixed-status families may inform necessary changes to programs and policies to improve the needs of this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural populations in the United States are faced with a variety of health disparities that complicate access to care. Community health workers (CHWs) and their Spanish-speaking counterparts, promotores de salud , are well-equipped to address rural health access issues, provide education, and ultimately assuage these disparities. In this article, we compare community health workers in the states of Indiana and Texas, based on the results of two separate research studies, in order to (1) investigate the unique role of CHWs in rural communities and (2) understand how their advocacy efforts represent a central form of caregiving. Drawing on ethnographic, qualitative data-including interviews, photovoice, and participant observation-we analyze how CHWs connect structurally vulnerable clients in rural areas to resources, health education, and health and social services. Our primary contribution to existing scholarship on CHWs is the elaboration of advocacy as a form of caregiving to improve individual health outcomes as well as provoke structural change in the form of policy development. Finally, we describe how CHWs became especially critical in addressing disparities among rural populations in the wake of COVID-19, using their advocacy-as-caregiving role that was developed and well-established before the pandemic. These frontline workers are more vital than ever to address disparities and are a critical force in overcoming structural vulnerability and inequities in health in the United States.