Author's response to reviews Title: The role of religious leaders in promoting acceptance of vaccination within a minority group: a qualitative study Authors:

Background – last sentence; I recommend replacing the words “role of.....in acceptance or refusal of vaccination” by “...views/attitudes and practices...of...related to vaccination...” In line with the change of the title the sentence was changed into ” role in promoting acceptance...” Since the attitudes of congregation members that appointed the religious leaders included in the study, I suggest deleting the second sentence of the results in the abstract. The sentence was deleted. Conclusions in the abstract: I am not fully convinced that the study findings support the authors’ conclusions, especially given that in some orthodox Protestant communities immunization coverage (>85%) is high, with religious leaders being vaccinated themselves. To explain the influence of the orthodox Protestant church order on the religious leaders’ stance on vaccination we added the following sentence: “Religious leaders’ attitudes towards vaccination vary from full acceptance to clear refusal. According to orthodox Protestant church order, local congregation members appoint their religious leaders themselves. Obviously they chose leaders whose views are compatible with the views of the congregation members.” Religious leaders that participated in the study support dialogue with the Dutch government during epidemics. Though they won’t directly act to increase immunization coverage, such dialogue is important and has the potential of contributing to containment of epidemics by other means than vaccines. We added a phrase emphasizing the importance of dialogue in controlling epidemics by other means than vaccination: “Although the dialogue with religious leaders that is pursued by the Dutch government may be helpful in controlling epidemics by other means than vaccination, it is unlikely to increase vaccination coverage. Introduction Page 5second paragraph: please provide descriptions of the epidemics of vaccine preventable diseases that occurred in these communities. The following description of the epidemics was added: “..a polio epidemic in 1978 (110 cases, one death) and 1992/1993 (71 cases, 3 deaths), a measles epidemic in 1999/2000 (over 3000 notified cases, 3 deaths), a rubella epidemic in