About

Arlie Adkins is an associate professor with appointments in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture's School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, as well as in the Health Promotion Sciences Department within the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. His research focuses on understanding the interconnectedness of transportation equity, affordable housing, and various health and safety disparities related to urban transportation systems. He teaches courses in transportation planning, planning theory, and the planning master's capstone studio. Dr. Adkins has previously worked in the planning department at TriMet, the transit agency for the Portland, Oregon region, and for Flexcar, a pioneer of carsharing in North America. His research topics include addressing transportation system health and safety disparities, the applicability of walkability measures in different socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts, and the role of affordable housing in providing access to neighborhoods that support opportunities and physical activity. His work has been funded by notable agencies such as the Federal Highway Administration, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Adkins has contributed to various publications and has been involved in research that addresses racial bias in driver stopping behavior at crosswalks, among other topics.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Public economics
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Medicine
• Geography
• Demographic economics
• Social psychology
• Business
• Psychology
• Transport engineering
• Engineering
• Cartography
• Environmental health
• Public relations
• Public administration
• Applied psychology

Selected publications

• New Onset Atrial Fibrillation in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, and Overlap Syndrome: A Retrospective Observational Study from the Trinetx Database

  American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  article

  Abstract RATIONALE:New-onset atrial fibrillation (NOAF) is a common arrhythmia associated with adverse outcomes in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Both conditions, through shared mechanisms, raise the likelihood of NOAF incidence, emphasizing the importance of epidemiological data and preventive measures to prevent NOAF burden. Therefore, we examined the risk of NOAF in patients with COPD, OSA, and their overlap syndrome (OS). METHODS: We extracted data from the Banner Healthcare Organization, US Collaborative Network in TriNetX, identifying three patient cohorts using ICD-10 codes for COPD (J40-J44) and OSA (G47.3). This included 73,540 patients with OS, 198,880 patients with OSA only, and 337,010 patients with COPD only. Patients with a prior diagnosis of AF before their diagnosis of OSA or COPD were excluded. Propensity matching was conducted based on age, sex, ethnicity, and cardiovascular disease risk factors and prevalence including hypertension, tobacco use, dyslipidemia, obesity, and ischemic heart disease. We calculated the relative risk (RR), hazard ratio (HR), and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for incident AF among propensity score-matched cohorts, comparing OS with OSA alone and OS with COPD alone.RESULTS: In the OS vs. OSA only comparison, 63,070 patients were matched per cohort. Lifetime incidence of new AF was higher in the OS group (13.65%) compared to the OSA-only group (8.24%), with an RR of 1.66 [95% CI: 1.60-1.72]. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated a lower AF-free probability in the OS group (65.96%) than in the OSA-only group (77.03%), with an HR of 1.56 (p < 0.001). In the OS vs. COPD only comparison, 65,810 patients were matched per cohort. Incidence of new AF in the OS group was 13.76%, compared to 9.86% in the COPD-only group, with an RR of 1.40 [95% CI: 1.35-1.44]. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed a lower AF-free probability for the OS group (66.13%) versus the COPD-only group (78.94%), with an HR of 1.28 (p < 0.001). Sensitivity analyses restricted to the first five years post-diagnosis revealed a persistently higher relative risk of incident AF in OS patients, with an RR of 1.67 [95% CI: 1.60-1.73] compared to OSA alone, and an RR of 1.34 [95% CI: 1.29-1.39] compared to COPD alone. CONCLUSION:We identified that patients with OS have a higher risk of NOAF compared to either condition alone. This emphasizes the need for vigilant monitoring and targeted interventions in patients with OS to decrease arrhythmogenicity risks.

  PublisherDOI

• Standardizing Vehicle Travel Speed Data for Road Safety

  Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology · 2024-10-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT In 2022, almost 50,000 people died in road crashes in the United States, with speeding implicated in 29% of these fatalities. Despite known links between vehicle speed and crash occurrence and severity, there are no federal guidelines for collecting vehicle travel speed (VTS) data. Cities with open VTS data are using unstandardized datasets, which complicates large‐scale and cross‐jurisdictional analysis. We conducted a qualitative assessment of open data repositories for the 25 largest U.S. cities, using a framework of knowledge representation, evaluated twelve metadata components, and determined the potential usability of these datasets. Our knowledge representation framework includes five data elements: speed metric, timestamp, geospatial representation, posted speed and vehicle type. Findings show that one‐quarter of these cities have open VTS datasets. Of those cities, none has a VTS dataset containing all the elements defined in our framework. This suggests the need to design information policy standards for the collection and sharing of open VTS data.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• United States County-level Social Vulnerability and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Mortality

  2024-04-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Disparities in Status Asthmaticus Death: A Cross-sectional Analysis 1999 - 2020

  2024-04-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Policy-reality gaps in Africa’s walking cities: Contextualizing institutional perspectives and residents’ lived experiences in Accra

  Journal of Urban Affairs · 2024-01-05 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  This paper confronts the current policy landscape and lived experiences of walking in African cities through the lens of policies, plans, institutional, and residents’ narratives. The paper builds on qualitative evidence drawn from content analysis and semi-structured interviews with local-level stakeholders across policy sectors concerned directly or indirectly with walking and walkability in the city. Perspectives from local government institutions are first reviewed to ascertain considerations for accessibility, safety, and pleasurability dimensions of walking and, second, contrasted with the lived walking experiences of residents of low-income settlements in Accra. Results indicate limited attention to pleasurability dimensions in both policy and municipal plans and significant incongruities with residents’ lived realities of walking. This parallel between the frameworks and plans underpinning the construction of the walking environment and the lived experiences of those affected by such decisions seeks to nuance debates about policy-reality (dis)junctures in African urbanism.

  PublisherDOI

• Centering equity and justice in land use-transportation coordination

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-06-06

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter describes how racialized practices of exclusion, disinvestment, and displacement and their ongoing legacies continue to impact individuals, families, and communities. It recognizes potential benefits of popular land-use and transport strategies, such as promoting transit-oriented and walkable development, but it also challenges professionals to examine potential downsides of current policy choices, particularly reducing affordable housing opportunities in highly-accessible areas. The chapter is organized around four prominent concepts in land use and transportation field that require some shifting to adequately prioritize equity and justice: (1) learning from the land use-transportation successes around the globe; (2) land use-transportation coordination as a future-oriented endeavor; (3) the role of regionalism in land use-transportation coordination; and (4) accessibility as a central tenet of land use-transportation coordination. It concludes by asking readers to reflect on how we might modify our current approaches to further center equity and justice in our land use-transportation work.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, and Quality of Life in Refugee Communities in Tucson, Arizona

  2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access

  In this multidisciplinary research project we aimed to study mobility challenges that refugees in Tucson, AZ, experience after their resettlement. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from interviews and survey data, we argue that mobility shapes the ways refugees foster social connections, attain employment and access educational opportunities. Accordingly, barriers to mobility negatively impact refugees’ perception of well-being in post resettlement. However, these challenges are not experienced evenly. Nor are refugees passive subjects who lack agency in overcoming various barriers they experience. The study reveals the resilience of the refugee community in navigating the intersectional challenges they confront related to their mobility. We hope that the implications of this study can inform various stakeholders to better support refugees in navigating existing mobility and transportation challenges and to promote policy change that can increase better spatial mobility for all Tucson community members.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Making of home: Transportation mobility and well-being among Tucson refugees

  Journal of Transport Geography · 2022-07-01 · 8 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Health Disparities, Transportation Equity and Complete Streets: a Case Study of a Policy Development Process through the Lens of Critical Race Theory

  Journal of Urban Health · 2020 · 53 citations

  • Political Science
  • Public relations
  • Public economics
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Another Look at Location Affordability: Understanding the Detailed Effects of Income and Urban Form on Housing and Transportation Expenditures

  Housing Policy Debate · 2020 · 33 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Public economics
  • Business

  Findings from a study using the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID) and detailed urban environment and transit data support the location affordability hypothesis. Households in location-efficient places spent significantly less on household transportation, enough to offset high housing costs. Walkable blocks and good transit especially contribute to these savings. But households with very low incomes (below 35% AMI) do not see significant enough savings. Authors recommend investments in transit, sidewalks, and economic development in disinvested areas; the preservation and creation of affordable housing of all types and tenures; and more supports for households with very low incomes.For decades, researchers have explored how location efficiency (LE) affects housing affordability, including incorporating transportation costs into a holistic housing affordability measure known as location affordability. Others have argued that estimated transportation savings from LE may be overstated because of limits in data and methods. Smart and Klein’s 2018 article in Housing Policy Debate analyzed the PSID and found “no evidence to support the location affordability hypothesis.” Considering their study’s policy implications, as well as its methodological limitations, we tested the PSID data at a smaller geography using more detailed household and urban form variables, per the LE literature. With this approach, we find statistically significant and meaningful transportation cost differences that are enough to offset higher housing prices for several income groups. However, the transportation savings for households in the lowest-income group in urban areas do not offset high housing costs. Because location-affordable places are in short supply, and the extreme shortage of affordable housing, both housing and transportation investments are needed to support households with low and moderate incomes. Expanding location affordability regionally will also help to address climate change and expand access to job opportunities, goods, services, and other amenities.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Maia Ingram

  University of Arizona

  6 shared

• Margaret B. Neal

  5 shared

• Gretchen Luhr

  Portland State University

  5 shared

• Carrie Makarewicz

  University of Colorado Denver

  4 shared

• Jennifer Dill

  Portland State University

  3 shared

• Cathleen Sullivan

  3 shared

• Robert Cervero

  University Transportation Research Center

  3 shared

• See‐Wei Low

  Cleveland Clinic

  2 shared

Education

• MCP, Department of City and Regional Planning

  University of California Berkeley

• Ph.D., Urban Studies and Planning

  Portland State University

  2014

Awards & honors

• Arizona APA’s Best Student Planning Project Award (2024)