He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Dr. Schechter was a National Health Research Scholar and Scientist from 1986 to 1999 and then a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Senior Investigator from 2000 to 2001. In 2001, he received a Tier I Canada Research Chair in HIV/AIDS and Urban Population Health.

Dr. Schechter combines interests in clinical epidemiology and health services research with HIV/AIDS and urban health research. He was a co-founder of the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network, a national network of investigators and research facilities aimed at conducting trials of HIV therapies, preventions, and vaccines. Dr. Schechter served as National Director of the Network from 1993 to 2014. He also co-founded the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and served as its first Director of Epidemiology and Population Health and is a former director of CHÉOS. He was the founding President of the Canadian Association for HIV Research and co-chaired the XI International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver in 1996. He was President of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences from 2007 to 2009 and served on the Board of Governors of the Council of Canadian Academies during that time. He joined the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research in 2006 as its first Chief Scientific Officer and is Co-Director of the recently established Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health at UBC.

Dr. Schechter is the author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and 590 abstracts and scholarly presentations. To date, he has been the recipient of approximately $95 million in competitive grants as principal investigator. In 1994, he was invested into the Order of British Columbia for his contributions to research. Dr. Schechter also received the Science Council of British Columbia Gold Medal in 2002, fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada in 2004, and fellowship in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2005.