LONDON — The picturesque fishing village of Mevagissey in southwestern England has a problem: This spring, the local doctor announced that she would quit, leaving 5,300 area residents facing a future without easy access to medical care.

While many small towns might have bemoaned the decline of rural life and wailed about funding cuts, villagers in Mevagissey were determined to avoid losing the service. So a handful started a social media campaign under the hashtag #WillYouBeMyGP to recruit a replacement, producing a bright promotional video to draw attention to Mevagissey’s attractions.

The National Health Service has been struggling to recruit G.P.s — as primary care doctors are known in Britain — and it has been even more difficult to entice graduates to move out of big towns and cities, with doctors who practice alone also facing a greater administrative workload. Cuts to public services imposed by the austerity policies of successive Conservative governments have also been felt particularly sharply in rural areas.

The Mevagissey campaign sought to raise awareness of the problem in the village, rally others to the cause, and, ultimately, identify candidates — as well as publicize the issue more broadly.