We thank Bombard and Mighton for their comments and for recognising that our contribution “offer a timely set of evidence-based principles that address a critical gap in practice and policy.” We also appreciate that Bombard and Mighton raise important points for which additional elaboration may be needed to ensure that the recommendations are clearly understood by readers.

Bombard and Mighton’s first consideration concerns equity. The authors appear to argue that not recommending recontacting as a ‘duty’ and recommending that each country operationalise recontacting in their own way has the potential to result in inequities both in access to information and in outcomes for patients across European countries. We agree that this is a very important issue, and we have discussed it thoroughly when drafting these ESHG recommendations. The overarching reason to not have recommended recontacting as a firm “duty” at this time is because we believe it would not be feasible for all contexts and could potentially cause more harm than benefit. Specifically, recommending a duty to recontact: (i) is unlikely to be useful or even possible in countries with legislations which do not allow this course of actions [1]; (ii) is likely to create significant practical and legal issues in countries in which recontacting may be legally feasible, but extremely challenging from a practical point of view, due to lack of resources.

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