We are then at the issue of what the term "explains" means...

Explains in a statistical sense?
Explains in an explanatory or fundamental cause sense?

CHD and diabetes "risk factors"  are socially structured.

Does Mills' argument about psychologism have a role here?

Psychologism refers to the attempt to explain social phenomena in terms of
facts and theories about the make-up of individuals. Historically, as a
doctrine, it rests upon an explicit metaphysical denial of the reality of
social structure. At other times, its adherents may set forth a conception
of structure which reduces it, so far as explanations are concerned, to a
set of milieux. In a still more general way, and of more direct interest to
our concern with the current research policies of social science,
psychologism rests upon the idea that if we study a series of individuals
and their milieux, the results of our studies in some way can be added up
to knowledge of social structure.

   Source:  C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959/2000, p.
67. New York: Oxford University Press.

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