Efforts to improve national civil registration and vital statistics systems are focusing on transforming traditionally passive systems into active systems that have the ability to reach the household level. While community health agents remain at the core of many birth and death reporting efforts, previous literature has not explored elements for their successful integration into efforts to improve civil registration and vital statistics systems. This systematic review of literature aimed to understand and describe the design features, resulting data quality, and factors impacting the performance of community health agents involved in tracking vital events.