Step 1: Recall the hierarchy of prevention. The four tiers, from earliest to latest, are primordial, primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Each acts at a different point along the natural history of a disease.
Step 2: Primordial prevention sits at the very top of this ladder. Its goal is to stop the underlying risk factors from ever taking root in a community that does not yet show them, rather than treating an illness that has already begun.
Step 3: Because lifestyle and behavioural risk factors drive chronic illness, primordial prevention relies on individual and mass health education and is regarded as the ideal approach for non-communicable diseases.
Step 4: Preventing the disease itself belongs to primary prevention; limiting impairment and disability belongs to the later tiers. Therefore primordial prevention specifically blocks the development of risk factors.
\[\boxed{\text{Risk factors}}\]