Risk factor doesn't mean causative, only that there's enough signal to use it in considering what interventions to pursue. Made-up example, maybe slightly elevated blood lipids by itself wouldn't merit lipid lowering agents, but in combination with other risk factors like high blood pressure or poor sleep regularity, they are merited.

The field of medicine in general understands the concept of a condition being secondary to another, underlying cause and might treat it as a comfort thing but doesn't consider that with fixing the underlying.